Every year around this time, we’ve grown used to hearing and sometimes debating trumped-up complaints about a “War on Christmas” And this year, we heard rumours from Don Cherry of a sort of war on Remembrance Day when he recently ranted about the dearth of poppies worn in early November on Toronto streets.

The battle lines of these two largely imagined wars converged this past week in Montreal, when Place Versailles shopping mall started promoting the arrival of Santa Claus at its parking lot by helicopter — an event scheduled for Nov. 11, at 10 a.m.

Santa ought to know this is disgraceful timing, and the mall’s owners should know it too. Remembrance Day ceremonies, of course, traditionally take place leading up to a moment of silence at 11 a.m. This is our most solemn civic occasion, in which we honour the sacrifice of our war dead and of those who’ve served in war — a tradition that goes back to the First World War, which at the time we hoped would be the one “to end all wars,” such was the monumental and pointless carnage of it.

Remembrance Day is an occasion when many reflect on the words of Canadian soldier-poet John McCrae’s “In Flanders Fields,” and its evocation of the debt we owe to those who “lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow” and now lie dead, row on row. It is an occasion when we might also reflect on the poems of English soldier-poet Wilfred Owen, who in one depicted the First World War as a retelling of the biblical story of Abraham preparing to sacrifice his son when an angel appeared to spare the boy’s life: “A Ram. Offer the Ram of Pride instead. // But the old man would not so, but slew his son, / And half the seed of Europe, one by one.” Or we might appropriately reflect on the words of poet Siegfried Sassoon, who wrote, “You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye / Who cheer when soldier lads march by, / Sneak home and pray you’ll never know / The hell where youth and laughter go.”

Sobering, sometimes grim stuff, but appropriate to the occasion Remembrance Day memorializes. What’s less appropriate is trying to do this reflection while “Rockin’ around the Christmas Tree” blares on in the background and some elf with jingle bells on his feet dances around, drawing your attention to purchasing opportunities.

When I discussed this on a radio panel on Newstalk 1010 Thursday morning, there was some consideration of whether this sort of thing could be addressed by making Remembrance Day a statutory holiday nationwide, as it already is in six provinces and three territories. It’s a suggestion that comes up frequently. Historically, however, the Royal Canadian Legion itself has objected, because of fears it would be observed as another day off — a chance to loaf around the house — rather than as a day when workplaces and schools can plan ceremonies or events to observe, and when many people, including public figures, should attend large civic remembrances in public squares.

But perhaps there is a different statutory remedy available. Perhaps we need a legislated kickoff to the Christmas season, before which no mall or retailer should start with the tinsel and the holly-jollying.

Because this Montreal mall story is just an egregious example of the creep of commercial Christmas celebration ever earlier in the year — intolerably early in the year. If there is any kind of metaphorical war concerning Christmas, it seems to me it is being waged and mostly won by marketers who want to push the season’s start into late summer.

Please do not misunderstand me as a general holiday humbug. I love Christmas, and the celebration of it. My family’s Christmas parties are among the great joys of my life. I am still a guy who will tear up at Miracle on 34th Street, again and again. I’m not even someone who gets hung up on the crass commercialization of the holiday — in its non-religious mainstream Santafied observance, for as much as it is marketed as a season of buying, it also remains widely understood as a season of giving, and of goodwill, and cheer. Of brightly decorated streetscapes and smiles and often charity. I love all that stuff.

But, you know, I love hamburgers, too, but I’d grow sick of them — and sick, period — soon enough if they were the only food I was ever allowed to eat. To everything there is a season and a time to every purpose, as the good book sayeth. And things remain special over time in part because we observe them in their season. Just as a down parka — perfect in the January cold — can make a July trip to the beach very uncomfortable, so a Christmas carol on Remembrance Day can spoil our appreciation of both.

There’s a perfect rhythm to the fall holidays in Canada: back-to-school season gives way to Thanksgiving, which is followed by Halloween, which makes way for Remembrance Day. Shortly after which Christmas jingling can begin.

To me, the appropriate time for the Christmas preparation to begin still seems to be in early December — perhaps a holdover from the religious Christmas season I grew up with marked by the four-Sunday Advent season. The Santa Claus parade in late November also seems like an appropriate enough civic kick-off. But at the very least — the very, very least, everyone ought to wait until after Nov. 11.

This seems obvious to me, and right and natural. So why did Starbucks already launch its festive holiday cups (well before American Thanksgiving, even)? Why was a radio station in Toronto already playing Christmas music in the first week of November? Why has the Bay already unveiled its big Christmas window display? And why is Santa Claus thwopping into a Montreal mall parking lot trying to spread joy and inspire purchasing one hour before Remembrance Day’s traditional moments of silence?

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Do we need a law dictating that everyone hold off on the Christmas decorating and celebrating and marketing until after our solemn observance is over? No. Legislation is, in all seriousness, probably a step too far. But it seems like the kind of respectful gesture our society might naturally insist on, voluntarily. An unwritten law. A bit common sense.

Apparently not common enough.

Edward Keenan writes on city issues ekeenan@thestar.ca. Follow: @thekeenanwire

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