'Tis the season

It's November, so I guess that means it's Chrismas time. Each year, the kickoff to the holiday season seems to get earlier and earlier. Many stores opened their doors at midnight for Black Friday last year, and now Walmart announced it will open at 8 p.m. Thanksgiving night, and Target will open at 9 p.m. It's getting ridiculous, if you ask me.

I really liked something late-night host Jimmy Kimmel said in his monologue this week: "Pretty soon we'll be eating our Thanksgiving dinner at Walmart." That's probably true.

Many I'm somewhat of an outlier with holidays. My family has never done things early. We usually shoot to eat holiday dinners around 4 or so, which makes it a late evening when we have Christmas. I'd rather just crash on the couch with my family after the meal, instead of worrying about Black Friday shopping. I've also started the Thanksgiving tradition of watching some of the best Friends episodes as well.

Last year was the first time I ever even went out for Black Friday shopping. Me and my parents drove around and looked at the long lines waiting to get into the stores for the midnight opening. Then, we went inside after the initial rush died down after 1 a.m. It wasn't too bad. I got a couple cheap DVDs.

But I really think the Christmas season has started too early. Television channels have a period where they run lots of Christmas movies. Now they've started earlier by having a "countdown" to it with more Christmas movies. The Hallmark Channel started right after Halloween this year.

The commercialization and holiday hype just gets more and more annoying to me. At some point, it has me longing for January.