Well, here we go again.

I heard my first Christmas music of 2008 last week - I’m not counting what was still on Muzak cycle just after New Year’s.

Maybe it’s been played in stores earlier, but if so it’s been lost in the general crowd noise. The day after Veterans Day, however - or, rather the night - I was shopping late for hummus, pita chips and garbage bags. In the nearly empty grocery store I could clearly hear a saxophone rendition of “Silver Bells.” I’m hoping it was on the store sound system and not just playing in my head.

In any case, the music matched the merchandise on display. Christmasware is already creeping out, trailing over shelves like kudzu, obscuring more practical products behind trinkets and shiny packaging.

Markdowns on real gifts are coming soon, as retailers gear up for a desperate attempt to get into the black despite (and especially because of) the staggering economy. Singer-songwriter-math teacher Tom Lehrer knew the practical meaning of Christmas half a century ago, and expressed it in his own Christmas carol:

“Hark, the Herald-Tribune sings/Advertising wondrous things.

“God rest ye merry, merchants,/May you make the yuletide pay.

“Angels we have heard on high/Tell us to go out and buy!”

Do we really have that much Christmas spirit?

Well, no. Nor did we have that much Halloween spirit, or spirits. Most of us won’t have all that much Valentine’s Day spirit, few but very small children will have the full Easter spirit, and some won’t have the personally lit fireworks spirit on July 4. Yet the pressure’s on during each of those to spend big money on something.

Or, really, six weeks beforehand. The 12 days of Christmas have expanded to more than 40, in the hope that ... what? People will shop early, forget they’ve done so, and shop again?

Whatever the rationale, all of marketers’ wiles are arrayed against us well in advance of all those days.

Why those, I wonder? Why all the effort to get us to spend so much money for Christmas specifically? Little gifts were traditionally exchanged for all manner of old-fashioned holidays, but somehow the Christmas tradition got selected as The One to blow up into an eggnog-laced sudden debt match. Is it just coincidence that it falls near the end of the year, the time when businesses take stock of how they’re doing?

After all, there’s nothing definitive in the Bible about what time of year Jesus was actually born. Many scholars suggest springtime, but it could have been August for all we really know. Initially, it just wasn’t considered important. The early church didn’t start to celebrate Jesus’ birth as a holiday until well over a century after the event, long after everyone with firsthand knowledge was dead.

By the time Christianity was adopted as an official religion of the Roman Empire in the early fourth century, however, church leaders had decided that they probably should celebrate their founder’s birthday at some point. With one guess as good as another, it made sense for the increasingly popular Christian holy day to coincide with existing holidays. Late December saw celebration of everything from the winter solstice to the mythical birthday of the god Mithras (also a very popular deity at the time) and the traditional Roman social-inversion holiday of the Saturnalia. Christmas fit in smoothly, and eventually absorbed all the rest.

My guess is that Christmas, like the others I named, is just a convenient excuse to urge the always-willing to shop. Notice how those big-spending holidays are spaced throughout the year.

There’s nearly two months between Halloween and Christmas, about the same between Christmas and Valentine’s Day, the same again until Easter. Then there’s a little longer until July 4, noted not only for roadside firework stands but for big sales - even the overkill of “Christmas in July” sales.

The longest financial breather comes between Independence Day and Halloween, but that’s peak vacation (and therefore driving, eating out and motel-staying) season. Plus back-to-school buying.

Given a few weeks each of advertising run-up, that keeps the commercial drumbeat going for one holiday or another almost constantly. As the last Christmas items are being remaindered, the first velvet hearts and chocolate roses will come in season. Now that candy canes are sliding onto shelves, you can get bags of individually wrapped candy for 75 percent off - 90 percent if it’s in orange and black packaging.

Once one holiday had been picked as a major commercial event, the next events to be hyped fell in line pretty easily. They just had to be the right distance apart; the proper flurry could be generated. There’s no indigenous tradition for Valentine’s Day in Japan, for example, but despite being culturally rootless it’s big, big business there now, too.

It struck me that I first noticed this year’s Christmas preparations just after Veterans Day, or Armistice Day, as it used to be known in honor of the end of World War I. I briefly wondered what it would be like if holiday hype was directed at days like that instead, with symbolic items being waved around for sale from the start of October.

It wouldn’t work. There’s not much you can sell for Veterans Day. In the United States, Nov. 11 now honors all veterans, as the parade in Bowling Green showed. But in England, where its original meaning is still prominent, they had a parade, too.

Three veterans, all over 100 years old, showed up, 90 years after they learned they’d survived the “Great War.” When your target market is that small, the profit-minded merchant will find another event to celebrate.