Enough with Christmas already.

Yes, I realize it’s only the first week of November. That’s the point.

It’s 70 degrees outside, the trees still sport green leaves and I’m already suffering a bad case of Christmas creep.

While nosing around the supermarket Halloween displays over the weekend, I accidentally snagged a bag of festive red and green Hershey’s kisses. The store’s Christmas candy shelves rivaled the cornucopia of its Halloween ones.

A recent trip to a drugstore turned up Christmas boxer shorts and other Yuletide novelties. Stores are already busily setting up its holiday lights.

Two weeks ago – a mere month into autumn – Costco had already decked its aisles with pre-lit trees and reams of wrapping paper. And Carnival Cruise Lines was running holiday TV commercials at the beginning of October.

Hark unto this weary shopper: Make it stop.

Christmas is becoming the seasonal equivalent of a presidential campaign: perpetual, crass and not about the real issues.

It’s bad enough when the mallow creme Cupids and chocolate-filled hearts show up in stores on Jan. 2. At least Valentine’s Day is in the same season as Christmas.

But with summer barely gone, shoppers are besieged with faux snow, Christmas cards, lighted lawn deer, “collectible” ornaments and Santa’s obese frame at every turn, all of which seem to land on shelves months ahead of schedule.

Thanksgiving used to be retailers’ signal to haul out the blinking lights and bad reindeer sweaters. Not anymore.

Now we go straight from suntan lotion to jingle bells. It feels like, as a colleague’s wife termed it, Hallogivingmas from Labor Day until the new year rolls in.

It’s not your imagination. Retailers are pushing holiday goods earlier each year. And instead of silver bells, all I hear are silver pieces hitting the till.

According to a 2004 story in DSN Retailing Today, a marketing publication, there’s a seasonal trend of introducing holiday goodies earlier so that stores end up “with a 100 percent sell-through” of merchandise.

Some economists have said the early Christmas-retailing strategy is a shrewd one. Stores want to nab precious dollars before family budgets get squeezed by high heating prices, present-buying and life necessities.

Shrewd, perhaps. Annoying, for certain.

Far be it for this Grinch to argue with economists. But seeing Christmas candy in October doesn’t make me want to shop. It makes me want to hide. Or at least hit the eggnog with gusto.

And because I end up wondering where the year went, it also makes me feel old.

Thanks to mercenary Yuletide commercialism, Christmas long ago stopped being a day; now it’s a two-month-long media blitz. Its religious and miraculous aspects have been supplanted by polish, spin, strategies and marketing.

Like so much else these days, the holidays feel too artificial, too contrived, too dreamed up by Hallmark and Chinese exporters to be enjoyable.

Bludgeoning shoppers over the head with carols, Santas and decorated trees in autumn, when we should be enjoying raking leaves, carving pumpkins and frolicking on sunny days, only exacerbates that fake-holiday feeling.

It’s time for an uprising, a crusade by folks who want to put Christmas back in its traditional calendar spot.

If you enjoy hearing Christmas music in September or buying treetop angels with your Halloween costume, by all means, go ahead.

If not, then boycott the candy canes, holiday dog bones and pine wreaths until after Thanksgiving. Only then will retailers get the message. Otherwise, Christmas won’t come but once a year: It’ll be with us for the whole darned 12 months.

– Bronwyn Lance Chester is a columnist for The Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk. Her e-mail address is bronwyn.chester@pilotonline.com.