Wonder How Santa Would Look in Orange and Black?

"Hi, my name's Terri, and I'm a Christmas Junkie"....."Hi, Terri"
 I love Christmas! I love everything about it from the tiny twinkling lights, to the Tacky, seen-from-space, displays, to the music, to the tree, and so on and so on and so on. I start playing Christmas music the day after Thanksgiving, and I try to put my tree up then as well. The day after Thanksgiving is the official foray into the Christmas season, shopping and otherwise. Well, that's the way it used to be when I was little. We had a tradition in our house. My two cousins would come to our house for Thanksgiving. They spent Thursday night and on Friday evening the four of us, me, my sister, and my two cousins, would get all dressed up in our Sunday best and my grandparents would take us downtown to Miller & Rhoades Department Store to see the REAL Santa Claus. Most years we were even lucky enough to dine with Santa, the Snow Queen, and one of Santa's elves in Miller & Rhoades' famous Tea Room. After dinner,  complete with linen table cloths and real cloth napkins, we'd venture on the elevator to the floor that contained Santa's Winter Wonderland and stand in line with countless other children anxiously awaiting our turn to see the REAL Santa Claus. He was the real one, all the others were just his helpers. He knew our names when he called us over after we had spoken with the Snow Queen. He even came down the chimney when he entered his Wonderland. It was, and still is, one of my fondest memories of my childhood. It was MAGICAL! It was something I looked forward to every year! It was tradition!
I heard something disturbing last week on the radio. It was an add for a local mall, and the big news was that Santa would be arriving there on November 12th. Are you kidding me? 6 weeks before Christmas Eve. It isn't about MAGIC anymore, it's about business. How many photos with Santa can we grind out before 6PM on Christmas Eve? How much money can we make? Don't get me wrong. Like I said, I love Christmas, but I do not love VeteraThanksistmas. Pretty soon Santa will arrive with the Halloween costumes. I don't know about you, but I think it would be awfully hard to carry all of those toys flying on a broom.