In my locale, Santa goes to work at the mall on the Saturday before Thanksgiving (i.e., yesterday).

I've been a Santa for a couple of years, but won't be doing it this time around. My facial hair isn't all the way back after neck cancer & radiatiton treatment earlier in the year, and I'm not really up to working two jobs at a time yet. My Santa-employers assure me that I can have the job back next year.

While I've been glad to take such an early start on Christmas on a professional level, as private citizens the missus and I firmly believe in a later, more civilized start. The lights around the door go up in mid-December, and the tree and other indoor stuff waits even longer, until about one week before C-Day.

We are pretty strict about taking everything down on Little Christmas, aka Feast of the Epiphany or Twelfth Night -- January 6 -- which is also the first day of Carnival (Mardi Gras) season here where such things are celebrated.

Many of our neighbors strike the set earlier, on New Years Day, but we're not ready at that point to abandon the holiday spirit. Of course, they generally have their stuff way earlier than we do, so it all comes out equal.