It's Christmas already, at least at Gracious Home.

The store at 67th and Broadway has filled its window with trees, ornaments and other Christmas imagery. So what if not even Halloween has arrived yet?

There was an article in the Times recently about retailers starting the Christmas season earlier. I think this will ultimately prove counterproductive. The effectiveness of Christmas promotions, I think, depends partly on the psychology of limited time relevance. You need to get that item now, and not wait two months, because in two months gift-giving and decoration season will be over. This creates an artificially high demand and the disproportionate share of sales for which Christmas season is well known.

But if you extend this too long, I think it's not only less effective, but it also induces a sort of Christmas fatigue. We all feel it when we hear "Jingle Bells" for the 247th time around December 20th. Christmas promotions may have a novelty value in early November, but that means that by early December, shoppers are overexposed to them. And when you start displaying Christmas trees in the window when it's sunny and 55 on an October afternoon, the whole situation just doesn't compute.

Someone should do a study of the effect of overexpansion of Christmas season on retail sales. My guess is that the end result is either neutral or, for the reasons above, even negative.