As the costumes get put away and the candy weight is worked off at the gym (well for some of us) stores all around the country exploded with Christmas decorations. It is as though once Halloween is over, stores forget all about Turkey day, and exploded for all your wants and needs for Christmas. The Hallmark channel even plays Christmas movies they day after Halloween!
There happens to be a term for this phenomenon: Christmas Creep. By definition, Christmas creep is the retail industry’s way of pushing Christmas up earlier in order to increase revenue.
Image from http://thetreetopper.com/
While all this Christmas craziness is going on what about Thanksgiving, pumpkin pie, and turkey food comas? Where is all the hype about Thanksgiving gone? Once Halloween is over, it’s as if everyone has forgotten all about Turkey day and fallen hard for the Christmas Creep (they should really come up with a better name for it).
According to Time Inc. Network, consumers are the reason for Christmas Creep. They state that, “retailers are just delivering what customers today seem to want”. Even more so, a study done by NFR found that in 2013 40% of shoppers started decoration shopping before Halloween, while another 20% started in September!
Let’s not even get started on Black Friday. Some shoppers will take their Thanksgiving dinner and wait in ridiculously long lines Thursday evening to get a slammin’ deal. Why? Thanksgiving is supposed to be about sharing what you are thankful for and spending time with loved ones. What happened to those glorious days of eating way too much food, playing charades with the cousins, falling asleep on the couch next to grandpa, and watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade?
Christmas Creep is slowly creeping up and taking over Thanksgiving. I challenge you this year to keep those Christmas decoration locked away until after Thanksgiving, spend time with your family on Thanksgiving and Black Friday instead of in line, and finally don’t forget the turkey!