good observation...

[acroyear]

Something powerful has been lost in the process, though: the knowledge that the Christmas season is a temporary triumph over the darkness of winter, rather than a surrender to false bonhomie or commerce.

The result is a reversal of C.S. Lewis's "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe," where the evil White Witch has cast a terrible spell upon the country of Narnia so that it is "Always winter and never Christmas." For Americans, once September arrives we're subjected to months and months where it's always Christmas and never winter [...]

-- source

One accuracy update: the Abbots Bromley Horn Dance, from the welsh borders (but on the English side) is not a Christmas, Yuletide, or Solstice ritual in any way. Its set as an equinox type of thing, performed on September the 12th, and performed throughout the day (not at night) and performed throughout the streets of the village (not in dark forests). Revels does it Revels' way, and the ABHD people hate it because of these misconceptions it brings.

The really annoying thing is that a member of the Foggs pointed that out to the editor of the piece, who was supposed to have gotten the author to make a correction before publication...