You betcha -- and especially this year, it seems.

When decorations start going up in stores the day after Halloween, as they did in some stores this year, and when ads on TV and in newspapers start advertising Christmas bargains well before Thanksgiving, that's too early.

I can perhaps understand it, given the economy, but my sympathy goes out to store employees, one of whom said to me a couple of weeks ago as Have a Holly Jolly Christmas was blaring out over the store's pubic announcement system, "By the time the holidays get here, I am going to be really sick of that song."

-- Brenda E. Sartoris, Richland