Christmas in October?

I wondered why the department stores begin decorating for Chrsitmas in October, so I asked a lady who works at K-Mart.  She told me that it's because things are so expensive that shoppers need the extra time to be able to afford them.  Also, K-Mart still has a lay away program.
I think most people I know put up their trees the weekend after Thanksgiving.  We didn't used to, but when we moved back to Virginia in 2000 we began decorating that weekend to have time to enjoy the fun there before we headed back to Tennessee for the actual holiday.
Driving through Martin, Beth and I noticed houses that already have their Christmas lights and garland up.  That's too early for me.  I need Thanksgiving to be a seperate holiday.
When the girls were little we put up the decorations to coincide with the Christmas break from school and kept them up until New Year's Day.  At some point we began putting the ribbons from the Christmas packages on the tree and calling it our New Year's tree.
Seems like I remember growing up the tree was a two (2) week event.  One (1) week before Christmas and one (1) week after.  Of course, we had cut trees back then instead of artificial.  Even the white flocked tree that Mama got from a florist one year was a real tree underneath.  It was beautiful.  She put blue and silver ornaments on it and we painted lots of other decorations silver.  (I associate painting pinecones, hedge apples, old ornaments etc with Christmas decorating - maybe that's why the smell of spray paint doesn't bother me).
A couple of years ago, I decided to decorate the house at the beach in other ways and not use the big tree in the living room.  Mainly because of our cat.  For those of you who know Oberon, no explanation is needed. For anyone else, he is a twenty five (25) pound tom cat (fixed) with an attitude problem.  I have done battle with him over the tree for years.  I never win the battle.  One year I even tied lavender scented moth ball packets to my tree to keep him out of it.  It didn't work.  I have tried everything that anyone has ever suggested to me to keep that cat out of my tree and none of it has ever worked.  He has broken more ornaments than you can imagine.  The last time we put the tree up, he climbed up the middle and tried too lay himself across some branches about half way up toward the front of the tree.  His weight tipped the tree over.  It fell on it's side across the coffee table.  The tree stand broke.  Luckily K-Mart sells replacements.
I'm not sure how we will be decorating this year, but I know it won't be until after Thanksgiving.