Although Christmas may be more than a month away, the shopping spirit of the holidays has invaded DeKalb’s major venues rather early.

Tom Kehrees, store manager of Wal-Mart, 2300 Sycamore Road, said that shopping for the holiday season won’t pick up until after Thanksgiving, but that displaying merchandise early puts the consumer in the Christmas spirit.

“The customer may not be ready to buy it, but when they get ready to buy they do remember what they see and where they saw it at,” Kehrees said.

Wal-Mart, which began displaying its Christmas items in October, is offering consumers the opportunity to place items on layaway without having to pay a charge.

“I think there is going to be some good pricing out there as the weather turns colder,” Kehrees said. “We don’t charge. It keeps all the Christmas gifts at Wal-Mart instead of your home.”

Kehrees added that because of the economy, stores will be pricing competitively.

“Be a smart shopper, and really look at pricing this year,” Kehrees said. “I think it’s going to be a very competitive season. We’ve got warm weather when we’re supposed to have cold weather — that really does slow down the sales of the cold weather merchandise.”

Diana Channing, store manager of Target, 2555 Sycamore Road, said Target began to position its Christmas merchandise the night after Halloween.

“We go overnight right after Halloween, so when the Halloween stuff sells out we go overnight to put out the Christmas stuff,” Channing said. “Basically, when the space that we have for our Halloween merchandise sells out, we have nothing else to put in there. We just put the Christmas merchandise straight in there because it takes quite a while to put it all in.”

Not only does Target have to complete the store transformation by Christmas, it also has to do it in about 21 days.

Channing said that while most people shop after Thanksgiving, Target’s sales have increased over the past several weeks.

“It seems each year like it’s getting earlier and earlier,” Channing said. “We’ve actually started seeing people with Christmas lists within the past two weeks.”

While Target does not offer shoppers with a layaway option, customers are allowed to have merchandise held for 24 hours.

Unsure of what the dwindling economy would do to Christmas purchases, Channing said sales are looking bright.

“At first I thought it was going to affect (sales) negatively, but from what I’ve seen the past couple of weeks, it hasn’t been effecting it that much,” Channing said.

Consumers will be able to take advantage of the early sales that are being offered by stores, and also will be able to find good product selection by not waiting for the last minute to shop.

“I would probably say to buy early this year,” Channing said. “A lot of different retailers have bought down (ordered less) not knowing how the economy is going to be. If they shop early, they can guarantee they are going to get the items they are looking for.”

Pete VandenBerg, store manager of K-Mart, 2700 DeKalb Ave., said setting up Christmas merchandise early is common.

“It’s pretty normal to set-up right after Halloween,” VandenBerg said. “It seems like it’s going to be pretty good because they are starting early, as far as Christmas shopping goes.”

K-Mart charges a five-dollar service charge for layaway.