It may look a lot like Christmas time, but most people would agree it doesn’t feel like Christmas.

The South is experiencing mild temperatures just ahead of the winter solstice. And while today’s rain is expected to cool things off, it will be warm again by Christmas day.

The long-term forecast calls for the Christmas day high to be even warmer than the current record high. The Weather Channel’s forecast is for a high of 80 degrees on Christmas Day, and a low of 58 degrees.

The highest temperature on record for Dec. 25 in Covington County is 78 degrees in 1982, according to wunderground.com. The lowest low came a year later, in 1983, when temperatures dipped to 10 degrees.

The average high for Christmas Day is 57 degrees, and the average low is 33 degrees, according to wunderground.com.

To date, the warmest it’s been this month is 80 degrees, and the coolest is 41, with an average mean temperature of 61.

In the same period last year, the high was 82, and the low was 35, with an average mean temperature of 57.

Even before Thanksgiving, stores including Macy’s, Kohl’s and Gap Inc. blamed unseasonable warmth on sluggish sales in early November. Planalytics estimated that warm weather cost stores some $185 million in lost sales in November — a crucial time when stores expect consumer demand to surge –compared with last year, Advertising Age reported.