I have to laugh...I had a 10% discount coupon at Target, went Sunday with the intent to buy a "faux" Christmas tree...usually it seems the really nice ones are gone fast. I was putting a carpet cleaner in my cart (why did I get white carpeting and a dog?) and someone was helping me. I said, "gee I am not going to have enough room for a Christmas Tree"...he told me they wouldn't be out until this coming weekend. I was in shock...Target not have there Trees up yet? They had a lot of other Christmas stuff up. Then I started laughing, because any other time I would have been appalled that they were up...but I wanted the discount ! There was still tons of Halloweenie stuff up, only 50% off. Have been checking them out at Lowes and Home Depot, they have been up a while.
Starting Score: EQ 679, TU 697LOL demi... quick, delete this before their marketing people read it and start even earlier next year! 
Reminds me of the story of how we acquired our fake tree... First Xmas in SoCal, in the desert. Our tradition is always to go buy a real tree the day after Thanksgiving. We bought a real tree (REALly expensive, being SoCal!) and it was completely DEAD within two weeks! I mean, so dead that it snapped and cracked on the way out the door.. it was so arid that even watering the tree twice a day did no good! We argued for a week about whether we should buy another real one on the principle of it (it's just not Xmas without a real tree!) or just get a fake one, since we were in CA for a few years. So I ended up going to Target the week before Christmas looking for a fake tree... which is of course impossible.. and standing at the return area for a few hours, hoping to snag one that was being returned! I was successful. The customer service people thought I was *weird* BUT we got our fake tree!
When I was growing up you wouldn't see anything x-mas related until after Thanksgiving.
Everything is so commercalized these days.
This will be my first fake. Have always put up the tree fairly late, and don't usually take down until January 6th ish. I decided on fake because I am usually gone over part of the Holidays, and just tired of worrying about fire hazards.
One year my old roomate and I put up three live trees. They didn't finish coming down until March..disgusting. Both had surgeries so we did have an excuse (a little anyway).
I also remember when I was about 7 we moved into an L shaped apartment building in February, and you could see into another apartment...they lit up their Christmas tree every night. I made friends with the daughter, they had not had a very good Christmas and were going to celebrate again on the 4th of July. This was a cut tree, needles were falling off, and they lit it up every night. Finally the manager made them get rid of it.
