LOS ANGELES — Christmas, they say, comes once a year, but “once” now lasts for days and weeks and months, as Friday’s inflatable Frankenstein’s monster becomes Monday’s inflatable snowman. The yuletide is now upon us, even before Thanksgiving, its autumnal opening act, has served its first pumpkin pie.

For someone growing up in Southern California, the season was largely understood through television, and old movies on television, where snow fell and sleighs slid and no one was walking around in shorts on Dec. 25.

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