• by J. Max Robins , Featured Columnist, November 11, 2015

I was talking on the phone to my friend and colleague Rob Edelstein about how, in the sometimes-maddening TV Everywhere universe, any holiday or election gets touted out earlier each year, like so many Black Friday ads for that 96-inch HDTV you simply can’t live without.

I don’t know about you, but whether it’s “Jingle Bells” in July or a next White House campaign that seems to begin 10 minutes after the new president is inaugurated, the perpetual event selling cycle has me in a tailspin. What I once looked forward to now fills me with dread, and I assume I’m not alone. It’s odd that this early-and-often way of doing business has now become the American way.

No sooner had my friendly diatribe ended, when I received a poem from the erudite editor and scribe Edelstein. Here’s just a taste:

T’was 44 Nights Before Christmas

T’was 44 nights before Christmas, so why am I writing?
‘Cause Santa came early, my God, it’s exciting!

I know it’s November, it’s only mid-fall
But my radio’s already decking the halls

The Donald keeps yapping and has no misgivings
He’s truly the Christmas gift that keeps on giving

Even the perennial “War on Christmas” started earlier this year, dovetailing so nicely with the endless 2016 White House race that has another ENTIRE YEAR to run, people. (Time check: Trump’s comments about Mexicans? That was a full five months ago.) Earlier this week, when Starbucks happily offered the multiplatform push for its annual holiday coffee cup — this year’s edition a solid red, sans “Merry Christmas” or “Happy Holidays” — the sadly inevitable passel of Christian evangelical groups protested it as some kind of Marxist/Devil take on that most sacred of holidays. Faster than you could say: “Out with you, Satan!” Mr. Trump suggested a Starbucks boycott might be a good idea, while humorously boasting that one of the company's highest-grossing stores was in Trump Tower.

I can already clearly picture a Yule Log channel not just running on Christmas Eve, but all year long. Then again, maybe I’m getting my airwaves crossed with all the radio stations that switch to a Christmas music format on Thanksgiving Day and watch the bucks come tumbling in.

This year, a couple of stations in Birmingham, Ala. switched to that holiday music format in late September, while stations in cities such as Boston and Atlantic City were a bit more restrained and didn’t get into the Christmas spirit till mid-October. By the first week of this month, 19 stations, including in such markets as Rochester, Denver and Detroit, had gone into full-tilt chestnuts-roasting-on-an-open-fire boogie, according to the industry trade “Inside Radio.” Wise men and women of media, rest assured, are watching radio ride the Christmas sleigh earlier and earlier each year as assuredly as we know George Bailey’s gonna raise enough money at the end of “It’s a Wonderful Life.” How soon before we’re seeing “A Charlie Brown Christmas” in mid-September or “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” before Halloween?

I will spare you the rest of Edelstein’s Christmas couplets and demon rhyming, save the line that goes: “Give Jeb a DeLorean, send in the Navy/so he can kill Hitler when he was a baby.” I guess my inability to resist that last Back To the Futurish line means I am not much better than the godless marketeers who decided Black Friday should begin with malls across America opening their collective doors at midnight on Thanksgiving.

Yes, I hear the collective groan, and as William Jefferson Clinton would say: “I feel your pain.” But let it not interfere with the ol’ important lessons of welcoming peace on earth and good will toward men and women — a message that could stand to be uttered a little early. And it’s in that spirit that I’d like to wish you all a timely (or is that timeless?) “Felice Kwanzidad!” Now, about that HDTV set….