Christmas In October?

ABC has a piece on how retailers are already starting to push Christmas when Halloween hasn’t even finished yet. This is one of my great pet peeves, not only has Christmas become overly commercialized, but it also keeps getting overly commercialized long before it’s due. It’s freakin’ October. There’s just no reason to start pimping a holiday that won’t happen for another two months. Already I’ve seen one commercial for Christmas decorations, which makes me want to find those responsible and beat them over the head with a fiberglass reindeer figure.

Of course, it’s all about the Almighty Dollar:

It’s a phenomenon called “Christmas creep,” according to the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. Hoping to catch early shoppers, retailers are extending their all-important holiday shopping season, which accounts for 25 percent to 40 percent of the year’s sales.

“The creep has been going on,” said William Cody, managing director of the Baker Retailing Initiative at the Wharton School. “Every year, retailers hope that coming out early is going to reduce the amount of promotions. They’d rather people buy at full price.”

Granted, I’ll defend capitalism any day, but even that has it’s limits. For one, anyone who is doing their Christmas shopping now is probably obsessive-compulsive enough to try to find the best deal anyway. Secondly, at this rate, by December 25th we’ll all be so damned sick of Christmas that we’ll actually want to spend time with our families rather than scurry around the mega-malls like a bunch of shocked rats.

I know, perish the thought that happens…

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