Christmas in July

"Christmas in July" used to mark the half way point of the year and mean Christmas was only 6 months away. But now it seems that is really when people are starting to set up for Christmas. I remember back in the day when stores like Macy's or JC Penny's would start putting their Christmas stuff out in October and everybody would feel really uncomfortable about it because it was too early in the season. But now if you don't have your Christmas stuff up by Labor Day, you're behind the times. Costco has to get there extremely large inflatable displays up because heaven forbid you would buy those anywhere else (an aside: a neighbor of ours has a large inflatable turkey on his roof. Really? We are now putting up inflatable displays to celebrate Thanksgiving? Really?)
We had to return something at the Gap this evening and Santa's village was already set up and Santa was even there trying to get Charlotte to come and take a picture with him. Riverpark has its big display up shouting "Happy Holidays" in festive Christmas colors on the corner of Blackstone and Nees. And we passed a usually vacant lot all ready to receive its first shipment of trees and flock them.
I personally have always been someone who likes to celebrate one holiday at a time. We just got done with Halloween so now let's celebrate Thanksgiving. Only until Thanksgiving is over can we put up any Christmas decorations or listen to Christmas carols. I'm like this in many things in my life. I guess I'm goal oriented in that fashion. When I was in college or optometry school and I had multiple tests during the week, I took them one test at a time. I couldn't begin to study for a test that was three days away before I had completed the next test. (That made for one hellish week in optometry school during finals when I had 7 tests in 5 days). I even used to be that way with food. I couldn't eat my potatoes until I had finished all of my cranberry sauce, although I've become much more relaxed when it comes to that.
Which leads me to a question, "When do you start listening to Christmas music?" As you've probably gathered from this post, I wait until the day after Thanksgiving. I feel that I get about 3 1/2 weeks of solid Christmas music and I don't dilute by starting it before. It gives me something to look forward as well. But I've also heard people who already are playing Christmas music because they love it so much and don't want to only be confined to 3 weeks of it? So which is it? Let me know where you stand by leaving a comment.