Well, the 2004 Kentucky Derby season is officially over here in Louisville. The month-long "Christmas-in-May" atmosphere is gone, soon to be replaced by the actual "Christmas-in-December" atmosphere that begins in a few weeks. Doesn't it seem like that sort of weird sales-y, retail Christmas atmosphere keeps getting earlier and earlier every year? The official Christmas season start date used to be Friday, November 26. Then, sometime in the '90s, we started to get that in-store Christmas preview right after Halloween. Next, it'll hit us right around Columbus Day. If that's not sufficient to start dragging our bloated carcasses into the stores earlier, I'm predicting it won't be too long before armed militia men begin storming the wealthy neighborhoods right around Labor Day forcing people into the malls at gunpoint. The whole thing just bugs me.