Summer's not even over yet and you're thinking about Christmas? Yup. In fact I might be too late already for Christmas images.

This year the Christmas buying season is bound to be much more compressed I think because of the big November U.S. presidential election.

But consider this. Yesterday I was in Walmart and the stockers were unboxing Christmas decorations. I was shopping for some Halloween props and I thought the picking were a bit slim and already they were putting up the Christmas stuff.

Basically the retail progression is something like Back to School, Halloween, Christmas, Clearance sales, White Sales (boring stuff like new pillows and sheets), Easter and then Summer stuff.

I'm thinking this year the retailers are hoping for the best Christmas season in years because of pent up demand (people can only skim and save for so long), a raising consumer confidence and a slowly improving economy.

The only thing stopping the strong Christmas season is the focus on the election and lot of the gloom and doom from the negative TV ads and just general uncertainty. Retails I think are poised for the race to start on day after the election and then it will be a sprint to the finish on Christmas Eve.

I know from my online business (Fishboy), the time frame for making sales has been shrinking down to about a two week window for online sales. People keep procrastinating or waiting for deals to the point that online retailers get pushed up a reality wall that is shipping time.

Anyway who doesn't like to produce some fun Christmas images to get into the holiday spirit? Sure its 70 degrees outside and the cucumbers keep growing and the kids haven't even thought about what they want to be for Halloween but artists have great imaginations and if you need to put yourself in a place of snow, bright lights and childhood magic, I'm sure you can do it.