Christmas Shopping by Mediterranean Interiors

The Christmas season or the festive season, also known as the holiday season or the holidays, is an annual period generally spanning from November or December to early January incorporating Christmas Day and New Year's Day. The gift-giving associated with the season creates a peak season for the retail sector extending to the end of the period ("January sales"). Christmas window displays and Christmas tree lighting ceremonies are customary traditions in various locales. In Western Christianity, the Christmas season is traditionally synonymous with Christmastide, which runs from December 25 (Christmas Day) to January 5 (Twelfth Night or Epiphany Eve), popularly known as the 12 Days of Christmas. Christmas in Italy is one of the country's major holidays and begins on 8 December, with the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, the day on which traditionally the Christmas tree is mounted and ends on 5 January with Twelfth Night (with the following day commencing Epiphanytide). Christmas is celebrated on December 25 Christmas Day, while the Christmas season extends beyond the holiday itself, commonly continuing through New Year’s Day and concluding on January 6 with the celebration of Epiphany. As the economic impact involving the anticipatory lead-up to Christmas Day grew in America and Europe into the 19th and 20th centuries, the term "Christmas season" began to also encompass the liturgical Advent season, the period of preparation observed in Western Christianity from the fourth Sunday before Christmas Day until the night of Christmas Eve. The term "Advent calendar" continues to be widely known in Western parlance as a term referring to a countdown to Christmas Day from the beginning of December. Beginning in the mid-20th century, as the Christian-associated Christmas holiday and liturgical season, in some circles, became increasingly commercialized and central to American economics and culture while religio-multicultural sensitivity rose, generic references to the season that omitted the word "Christmas" became more common in the corporate and public sphere of the United States, which has caused a semantics controversy. By the late 20th century, the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah and the new African American cultural holiday of Kwanzaa began to be considered in the U.S. as being part of the "holiday season", a term that as of 2013 had become equally or more prevalent than "Christmas season" in U.S. sources to refer to the end-of-the-year festive period. "Holiday season" has also spread in varying degrees to Canada; however, in the United Kingdom and Ireland, the phrase "holiday season" is not widely understood to be synonymous with the Christmas–New Year period, and is often instead associated with summer holidays.

Article title : Christmas and holiday season
"makes most shops open for shopping. Locals and tourists love to watch the 30-meter Swarovski Christmas tree in the Central as well as the Christmas light displays..."
Article title : Economics of Christmas
"gifts, decorations, and supplies to celebrate. In the U.S., the "Christmas shopping season" starts as early as October. In Canada, merchants begin advertising..."
Article title : Black Friday (shopping)
"States. It traditionally marks the start of the Christmas shopping season and is the busiest shopping day of the year in the United States. Many stores..."
Article title : Sunday shopping
"bans often includes secular reasoning. Rules governing shopping hours, such as Sunday shopping, vary around the world but many countries and subnational..."
Article title : Christmas
"retailers. Christmas market in Frankfurt, Germany Each year (most notably 2000) money supply in US banks is increased for Christmas shopping. Christmas has been..."
Article title : Shopping
"produce markets gradually gave way to shops and shopping centres; which changed the consumer's shopping experience. The New Exchange, opened in 1609 by..."
Article title : Christmas Tree Shops
"Christmas Tree Shops (also known as Christmas Tree Shops andThat!, or simply andThat!) was an American chain of big-box specialty retail stores, headquartered..."
Article title : Paddington Bear
""Paddington and the Christmas Shopping" – Paddington buys presents for the Brown family. "Christmas" – Paddington enjoys his first Christmas with the Browns..."
Article title : Game (retailer)
"developed by Freak Storm Games titled Christmas Shopper Simulator, which received a sequel titled Christmas Shopper 2: Black Friday. Electronics Boutique..."
Article title : Christmas creep
"motives for extending the Christmas shopping season have also included concern for the well-being of factory workers, shop girls and delivery boys, and..."