With eager merchants putting up store decorations in October -- while touting their "unbelievable" sales as a way of enticing us to buy, buy, buy -- and cities staging their parades just after Labor Day, it's becoming hard for some people to tell just when the Christmas season begins.

But not for me. The holiday season begins the exact day the Piggly Wiggly and other grocery stores break out the eggnog. This year, that was about the first of November, and I was delighted to be in my neighborhood grocery store when the dude delivered the first batch.

"Kind of early to be putting that stuff out," I said, trying to ingratiate myself to the shelf stocker lest he tell me it was all reserved for others. The look he shot me told me he was not in a festive mood. It also told me where he thought I could stick one of those quarts.

Despite his inhospitableness, I purchased two quarts -- one of which, sad to say, never made it out of the parking lot alive.

A great philosopher -- OK, it was just me -- once noted that eggnog, like only a couple of other things in life, is a lot like liquor: Even when it's bad, it's good.

But like a lot of other things -- say, for instance, moonshine and homemade cookies -- the first batch is rarely the best. Perhaps it was my anticipation, or the fact that I gulped most of it without actually tasting it, but the first sip of the season was a disappointment.

Could it be that they milked the eggnog cow too soon? Or plucked the tree before it was ripe?

Even though I consider myself an eggnog connoisseur, lots of people I asked thought the stuff should be poured down the sewer.

No holiday staples get as much bad press, ridicule and disdain as eggnog -- someone once said it was made from elf snot -- and fruitcake, which make up the two essential food groups.

Every time I hear people joking about fruitcakes -- according to lore, there's only one fruitcake in the world, and everybody keeps sending it to somebody else -- I want to stand up and defend my nutty buddy.

I know there's more than one fruitcake extant, because I polished one off yesterday and hope to find another just as good. (I even discovered what that green thing is in fruitcake: a dyed cherry. Like you, I'm sure, I'd hoped it was something more exotic -- like green eye of newt.)

That fruitcake discovery was a bit of a letdown, but what I learned about eggnog was fascinating. The name, according to some history I read (I told you I was serious about the stuff), comes from an Old World concoction of egg-based milk and rum, the latter also being known as grog.

According to legend, the Old World dudes got tired of saying "Arghhhh, gimme a pint of that egg and grog, matey," so they shortened it to the name we now know and love.

Years ago, I learned that George Washington loved eggnog, especially after he added rye, whisky, rum and sherry to it. After drinking that, I'll bet he was the father of more than just our country. Nor is it any wonder that he had wooden teeth.