By Craig Graves, Contributing Writer
It is early-to-mid October. You hop in your car and drive to a store. Any store will do, as long as you can buy your groceries, a Halloween costume,
and stock up on candy for Trick-or-Treaters. You wander the aisles of the store looking for the items on your shopping list. Suddenly, you near
the section for Halloween, and you spot a familiar, old, bearded man in a red suit with fluffy, white trimming. He’s sitting there on a tin of decorated cookies, smiling at you with rosy cheeks. It’s Santa Claus! Days pass and Halloween dwindles as Christmas takes over. It isn’t even November 1, and
Christmas decorations are already being sold.
This story might be a bit overdramatic, but it isn’t untrue. I have seen this happen every year for most of my life. I find this practice of selling holiday paraphernalia nearly two months before the actual holiday to be annoying and silly. I don’t want to see Christmassy things before Halloween, or even before Thanksgiving for that matter. Why can’t Christmas things be sold solely during December?
I understand why businesses start selling decorations and things for certain
holidays early: money. By offering decorations months in advance for certain holidays, businesses and grocery chains can sell the merchandise at a low price and reel in more people to buy them. So if I wanted to buy
my parents Christmas-themed mugs, I could buy two mugs in October for the same price as one mug in December. Now if my friend wanted to wait to buy mugs for his parents, he would end up paying more than me the closer to Christmas he waited.
It isn’t just Christmas decorations being sold early that annoys me. There is also the issue of playing Christmas music on the radio early. I do enjoy this music, just not for two months straight. It gets old and boring to the point of
irritation. Why can’t everything Christmas-related appear on December 1?
Other holidays have a knack for popping up early in stores. Merchandise for St. Valentine’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day, and Easter tends to arrive early in stores. Commercials for these holidays and others are run with increasing frequency the closer to the actual holiday you get—very similar to how political commercials seem to account for most of the commercial breaks during the election season.
It is fine for all of this hype and capitalism to be put on these holidays, but I’d like the excitement to start no more than four weeks before the actual holiday. If it doesn’t, I get tired of the holiday before the holiday ever happens, and then I don’t enjoy the holiday at all. How can I really enjoy seeing my family or friends on Christmas if I’m all Christmas-ed out?
