The leaves are changing, school is in full swing, pumpkin spice and everything nice flavors have been released. While coffee shops are just now releasing their fall menu items, retail stores have already placed their Christmas decorations front and center.
Target, one of the leading retail stores, already has Christmas items on their website showing off that they’re a “one-stop shop for everything Christmas.” Hobby Lobby has had their Christmas decorations on display since summertime. Marshalls, a branch off of TJX Companies, has their Christmas items on the front displays of their store and their website.
While these companies are already starting to celebrate Christmas in October, Walmart is still full swing into fall and Halloween decorations. Walmart and Target being two of the top leading retail stores but not sharing the same holiday decorations poses the question: when is it too soon to start celebrating? Another way to look at that question is when is it acceptable to start celebrating? The answer lies within how much a person enjoys the holidays. If someone prioritizes celebrating Halloween, they tend to hold off on thinking about Christmas until after October 31. If they love Thanksgiving, they push it off until after that festivity.
I grew up celebrating Christmas right after Thanksgiving dinner. It was tradition in my household to eat dinner with my family, then come home and take all the Christmas decorations down from the attic and set up the tree that night. We would then conclude Thanksgiving with Black Friday shopping. As I’ve grown up and times have changed, I recently came home for fall break to put Christmas decorations up on the front porch at my parent’s house. I love Christmas and will always be the type of person to listen to Christmas music in July, and only July, until October, which is when I personally start celebrating.
I was curious and asked the volunteers of Main Hill Media when they thought it was appropriate to start celebrating. 35 people answered and the results concluded that 54% of the group said after Thanksgiving, 34% said after Halloween, and 12%, including me, said in October.
Over half of the results are in line with the calendar, which gives enough time for each holiday to shine. With just a small fraction of people celebrating Christmas in October, there are benefits for companies releasing holiday items earlier because it still would hit a certain demographic who would purchase them. Nonetheless, I know that there are people in the world who love the fact that Christmas is celebrated earlier and earlier each year and that it’s become the norm to start celebrating the second that the temperature dips below 60 degrees.