The trick-or-treat candy stashes are barely thinning as the season of big holiday business comes to town.

The holidays celebrated towards the latter quarter of the year include Halloween, Thanksgiving, and the gift-giving season of Christmas in that order by calendar date. Christmas, however, time seems to be the trailblazer of the three, making its presence as early as October on retail store shelves. Thanksgiving is shoved under the rug as Halloween barely clings to life due to the laws of supply and demand.

Christmas time is usually a happy time, full of meaning and tradition. But as of late, the true meaning of Christmas has become lost in holiday sales and the quest for the perfect gift.

Local stores’ shelves have been stocked deep with Santa and his reindeer since before the Halloween surge in an attempt to prolong the shopping season and to up the big bucks. Ornaments, wrapping paper, and holiday cards have bombarded the consuming public earlier and earlier every year it seems.

Christmas in July is not just a silly saying any longer. It is slowly becoming the reality. In order for a store to have the holiday products available when the shopping season commences, orders, shipments, and deliveries must be made early in the summer, if not any sooner, to satisfy customers.

Thanksgiving, unfortunately, has become the forgotten holiday. Turkey and stuffing can’t compete with Santa in this race. The biggest shopping day for the holiday season takes place during the 24 hours following Turkey Day. Most retail stores offer some kind of sale to kick off the holiday shopping spree. Consumers can’t even wait until they fully digest their turkey dinners for those big holiday sales where they may get only a portion off their potential credit card bill, or rather enough to pay for their gas to and from the store.

Saving a few dollars here and there though may not be worth the kicking and screaming required to snag the ugly Christmas sweater from the 20% off rack before being overrun by the sea of adamant bargain hunters suffering from impulse-buying.

The meaning of Christmas, let alone Halloween and Thanksgiving, has been misplaced among the ideas of supply and demand.

After seeing holiday decorations, Christmas decorations to be exact, for months in advance repeatedly from store to store, the holiday itself comes off as being stale and hollow. It’s like seeing the same reruns of a TV show over and over again. Memorization of every spoken word and action is inevitable. It becomes boring. Christmas regrettably is becoming a rerun.

Big business, supply and demand, and impatience has lead Christmas to lose its deeper meanings and its profound impact on America. So instead of calculating the dollars to be spent on gifts and decorations again for the tenth time this week, appreciate each day for what it is, rather than using the Thanksgiving shopping weekend to celebrate a little bit of Christmas.