Stores keep pushing start of Christmas shopping season earlier and earlier

Early last September, right before Hurricane Florence hammered the coastal area of North Carolina, Lee Ann and I did some shopping to deal with autumn home improvement projects, and we stopped into Home Depot and Lowe's as part of our usual comparison shopping and deal-hunting.

In both stores, I was surprised to see the stores already decorated for Halloween, which was still six to seven weeks away. So I did a post about it.

We were at it again last week (shopping for various household projects), so we found ourselves back in a couple of big-box stores. This time, it was Costco and Home Depot. And each was already dressed up for the Christmas shopping season, and most of the Halloween stuff had been bumped to the upper level shelves. You read that correctly; we're still almost three weeks away from Halloween.

I guess I shouldn't be shocked anymore, but nevertheless ... I still am. It still doesn't feel right to be looking at yuletide decorations in early October. Well, as the photos in this photos show, I stopped to take photos with my iPhone X at each store.

I'll start with the shots from Home Depot, the last of which is the closeup of Santa. Costco pictures begin with the Christmas tree and box display right below Santa ... except for the last shot. I'm back at Home Depot for the skeleton pirate head shot. I figured I owed Halloween at least something.

As always, if you would like to view a larger and sharper version of a photo, simply click on the image. This is particularly helpful when accessing the blog from a mobile device. If you'd like to see the full gallery of photos from each visit to Costco and Home Depot, click on the link over the store names in this sentence.