S.J. CAHN -- Editor’s Notebook

A few weeks ago, I got one of those unpleasant, though not unexpected,

shocks when I walked into a let’s-not-name-it department store.

Everywhere I looked there were paper turkeys, Pilgrim hats and

clothing in colors the leaves turn in other parts of our country.

Thanksgiving, according to them, was here. And it was still September.

Worse still, tucked behind the Thanksgiving displays were fake

Christmas trees, strands of holiday lights and more than a few

3-foot-tall Santas.

It was still September.

I stood there muttering to myself, a mixture of half-phrases that

combined meant something along the lines of “I can’t believe how every

year this stuff pops up earlier” and “I can’t believe I’m getting old

enough to complain about how every year this stuff pops up earlier.”

I suspect I was much like the crazy people you run across all the time

now, talking loudly to no one around them, often gesturing for effect for

no apparent reason at all.

You’re able to still your panic when you realize they’re on a cell

phone, of course. But, of course, I didn’t have a phone and couldn’t even

pretend I was talking to someone else.

Luckily for me, before anyone had the chance to call the police and

have me arrested, I was able to harness my outrage and focus it into a

more manageable seething about how businesses take (and often make)

holidays and cultural traditions, turning them to their own, capitalistic

ends.

The ever-lengthening of the fall holiday season -- which, by my latest

experience, is now just days shy of spilling over into summer -- is the

most obvious, the most notorious example. Valentine’s Day is another,

though I’ll only say that’s what I’ve been told on the chance my wife

sees this.

As disturbing as this trend is, it’s at least understandable.

Businesses are in business to make money, and encouraging the holiday

shopping season can only boost their bottom lines.

Of course, if we’d all steadfastly resist their advances, we could

return to the halcyon days when Halloween started in early October,

Thanksgiving didn’t appear until the pumpkins were all withered and no

one thought about holiday gifts until they squeezed themselves among the

shoppers on the day after Thanksgiving.

But I know -- oh, how I know -- that isn’t about to happen.

Just last week, any hope I had to keep the holiday season when it

should be flamed out.

I got home late, well after the sun had dropped over the horizon

toward Hawaii (where a summer-ready Santa is OK by me).The street lights

were on, the headlights of the passing cars starburst through the dirt on

my windshield.

But another series of lights caught me eye -- caught, held, tied-up,

pummeled, left for dead.

One of my neighbors, far enough down the street that I haven’t

knowingly run across him or her even on my morning runs, had a string of

white lights wrapped around a fence.

Christmas lights. Before Halloween, let alone Thanksgiving.

Believe me, I checked. Maybe they were orange? No. Maybe I was missing

the red and blue ones, and they were strung just as a show of newfound

patriotism. No again.

These were Christmas lights, plain and simple, lit up in mid-October.

There’s only one excuse for that, and it’s even worse than actually

hanging the lights this early.

You can rest assured that I’ll be checking to see if those lights even

come down after the holidays. But I suspect my neighbor is one of those

people.

* S.J. CAHN is the senior city editor. He can be reached at (949)

574-4233 or by e-mail at o7 steven.cahn@latimes.comf7 .