Every year about this time I hear someone complaining about the commercialization of Christmas as they eye the early October displays of holiday wrap and lights at the warehouse stores.

I understand the sentiment. I used to gripe the same way that Christmas shouldn’t come before Halloween. But after years of fighting the trend of an earlier and earlier Christmas shopping season, I changed my tune.

Eleven months out of the year it is difficult to juggle all the commitments that come with being a working mom. In December, it’s impossible, unless you start early, like October.

My shift in attitude came after talking to a fancy-cookie-baking, custom-stocking-sewing supermom friend who told me how she addresses all her Christmas cards on Thanksgiving.

She doesn’t write all the cards on Thanksgiving, she simply knocks out the tedious task of addressing, stamping and sticking return labels on envelopes while the pumpkin pies are baking and the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade is playing on TV. Then through the end of November and early December, she writes cards and drops them in the mailbox in between carting the kids around and running errands.

This sounded like a great idea: No more frantically searching through my address book on Dec. 23 for that return label that I ripped off a birthday card — I was going to be prepared.

Of course, to be able to address our photo cards in late November, you have to make the cards in early November to allow shipping time and take full advantage of those freebie coupons from online photo sites like Snapfish and Shutterfly. This means you have to have sorted through all the family vacation photos or, worse yet, all the photos from the entire year by the end of October.

And if you’re like me, these photos do not live carefully catalogued on your computer hard drive and backed up to an off-site server; they live on your phone. The hours-long commitment required to download the sheer volume of photos from my phone is deterrent enough.

So even though I haven’t even finished figuring out this year’s Halloween costumes, I welcome the cheery weekly reminder at Sam’s Club that Christmas is coming, time to start downloading.

Some years this has worked out beautifully. Last year I failed to heed the call of the early Christmas carols and found myself standing in line at the Costco photo department less than a week before Dec. 25 pleading to process my cards in the one-hour photo queue.

But it’s October and I am still hopeful that this year I won’t get so caught up in the frenzy of holiday activity and will maintain my peaceful attitude and wish my loved ones a “Merry Christmas” on time. And isn’t hope, peace and love what Christmas is all about?

“She Speaks” is a weekly column by the women writers of the Honolulu Star-Advertiser. Reach Donica Kaneshiro at dkaneshiro@staradvertiser.com.