Welcome to the Thanksgiving Season (November 1, 2007)

So, now that the Halloween season is over, it's time to air commercials with a Christmas theme, right? WRONG!

This year, the Thanksgiving season is the shortest as it can be with a mere 21 days between Halloween and Thanksgiving Day, which is November 22nd this year. Next year, it falls on November 27th, making it the second-longest Thanksgiving season of a calendar year (November 28th is the latest it can fall on as it falls on the fourth Thursday in November.)

Since it's the Thanksgiving season, we refrain from decorating anything with a Christmas or other holiday theme except for Thanksgiving decorations. Put up some pilgrims, turkeys, indians, harvested fruit baskets, and other Thanksgiving symbols on display. Leave the Christmas stuff out of it until the day after Thanksgiving season ends, which is November 23rd in 2007.

Radio and TV stations shall not engage in the participation of accepting advertisements with a holiday theme other than Thanksgiving. We're not doing Christmas yet!

In this Thanksgiving season, we observe the Days of the Dead for the first two days in Mexico, but you can observe it in the U.S.A. November 11 is Veterans Day where we give thanks to the heroes in the military who help keep our country free. Then, of course, there's Thanksgiving Day, which is the cornerstone of the Thanksgiving season.

Record stores.... oops. There's no such thing as a record store anymore. Tower and Wherehouse used to stock Christmas cassettes and CDs around this time when these stores once existed in the past. Nowadays, you can buy them anytime of the year on the Internet, putting the record stores at a severe disadvantage. For instance, for the Christmas in July holiday, people wanted to buy some Bob Rivers comedy CDs in late June in time for the holiday, while the record stores waited until November to display them in the racks. You can sell anything you want, but no Christmas displays until the day after Thanksgiving.

The upcoming Christmas shopping season in the next month will be extra special as it's the first time that all of the TV sets will be equipped with ATSC tuners, and some with QAM tuners for digital cable, so that anybody who buys a new TV (except for the obsolete analog-only TV sets that should not be sold in the big stores ever again) will get a TV set all set for the future. This is the real first season for buying a new TV as they're all digital.

The stores that are still trying to unload the obsolete analog TV sets and VCRs should be ashamed of themselves and just donate the inventory to Goodwill. Fry's Electronics are displaying analog-only VCRs without the required Consumer Alert labels telling them that they're no good for over-the-air reception after analog ceases on the major TV stations in February 17, 2009.

You can plan your Christmas and Hanukkah shopping lists in November, then get ready for the real and official first day of the Christmas season on November 23rd. It's not the Christmas Season until David Tanny says so, and right now, he says that it's the Thanksgiving Season!

Also, November 1st marks the first day of the Winter Semester, and it ends on April 30th. The Summer Semester ended on Halloween, which felt weird because it's the first time that we celebrated Halloween while in Daylight Saving Time. The sun was still up at 5pm, and there's no sun in the 6am and 6pm hours. We're in the middle of the Fall Semester, which is the first day of the fourth month of the semester. The Spring Semester returns on February 1, 2008.