James Madison University’s Barkley Rosser laments about the creeping excesses of Christmas:

Disgusted by the crass commercialism associated with the Christmas holiday in the US. In this column he proposed dividing the holiday into two: a strictly religious one, “the Nativity” without gift giving, and a gift giving one he argued should be called “Excessmass,”

for some years now a local radio station has started playing the schlocky commercial Xmas music (“Frosty the Snowman,” etc.) starting a day or two after Halloween, but then on Dec. 26 is back to its usual pop music stuff. Hey, Christmas is over! Time to move on to Valentine’s Day! And also this year I saw the stores breaking what had been a Halloween barrier (the Thanksgiving one long ago broken) and putting up all their Xmas stuff in October. Hey, with all that going on for so long, of course it is time to put all those decorations away the minute Christmas is over!