Majority of Americans think we celebrate the holidays too early

If you feel like America starts celebrating the holidays too early every year, you're not alone. A poll published Tuesday by PollPosition.com found that 61 percent of Americans think we celebrate the crowded end-of-year holiday calendar--Christmas, Hanukkah and Kwanzaa--too early.

According to the Dec. 4 telephone survey of 1,029 registered American voters, 27 percent said they were fine with the early-celebration status quo. Twelve percent had no opinion on the matter.

Of those surveyed, 68 percent of Americans 65 and older felt the current schedule of holiday revelry is premature, while just 20 percent of that group does not. (Perhaps that why there's a Festivus for the rest of us.)

Among younger Americans--those between the ages of 18 and 29--opinions were split: 42 percent said said we celebrate the holidays too early, 44 percent said we do not and 14 percent had no opinion.

Men and women were more or less split, too. Sixty-one percent of men said holiday celebrations start too early, and 26 percent said they do not; 60 percent of women surveyed said celebrations start too early, and 28 percent say they do not.

The push for early holiday celebration appears to have been the reason a man in Decatur, Ga., was arrested earlier this week for using a shotgun near a mall to gather Christmas decorations.

"[He] was firing into the trees in an attempt to get mistletoe out," DeKalb, Ga., police spokeswoman Mekka Parish told a local television station."To decorate his home for Christmas."

The man, Richard Robinson, was charged with illegally discharging a weapon and reckless conduct. According to the police report, Robinson "said he does this every year, but never in the mall parking lot. The suspect was surprised he was getting arrested."

Other area residents were surprised, too.

"A shotgun is the quickest and most efficient way" to retrieve mistletoe from treetop height, Richard Crabbe, a photographer for 11Alive, told the station. "Unless you want to climb the tree and pick it."

You can click here for the full results of the poll.

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