Merry scary Hallowthanksmas: Stores celebrate all the holidays, all at once, thanks to holiday creep
Katherine Mansfield/Observer-Reporter
Chris Perkins, store owner of Rustic Creations in Tanger Outlets, set out his holiday scents at the end of September, and visitors already have made Christmas purchases. Perkins said life is short, and you might as well celebrate all the seasons all year long.
Katherine Mansfield/Observer-Reporter
It’s Hallowthanksmas at Rustic Creations in Tanger Outlets, where store owner Chris Perkins offers the scents of fall and Christmas to shoppers all year long. Perkins said folks have already dropped in to ogle the sparkling tree and purchase holiday gifts.
Katherine Mansfield/Observer-Reporter
A Hallothanksmas sign greets Rustic Creations customers at Tanger Outlets in South Strabane Township.
Katherine Mansfield/Observer-Reporter
It’s winter-fall at Kirkland’s, where customers can purchase snowmen and pumpkins in one svelte swoop. Big-box stores and local retailers are embracing “holiday creep” and celebrating the holidays early this year.
Courtesy of Staci Jones
Staci Jones has been pouring pumpkin candles since August, and this year debuted her holiday scents a month early. Folks, she said, are excited to pick up gingerbread and spiced winter tea candles from Chloe & Me along Monongahela’s West Main Street and at fall festivals throughout Washington and Greene counties.
Halloween is not yet come and gone, and Thanksgiving’s still on the horizon, but Christmastime has arrived at many storefronts.
“The tree is staying up all year,” said Chris Perkins, who owns Rustic Creations at Tanger Outlets. “It makes people happy. It puts people in a better mood. I had people, they’re like … we needed to come in to see the tree.”
Rustic Creations visitors are greeted by a sign that reads “HallowThanksMas,” a mash-up of the holidays for which stores are simultaneously decked out. A Christmas countdown cheerfully sits atop Rustic Creations’ checkout counter, and stockings hang by the decorative chimney, with care.
“I like to celebrate Christmas before Halloween. The tree has Christmas ornaments on it, has fall leaves on it, and I just got a full-size human skeleton – fake, of course,” Perkins laughed, adding he sold 10 Christmas gifts in one day last week. “It’s just like, why not? Life’s too short. Fall is a happy time. There’s a lot of stuff to celebrate.”
Before Hallowthanksmas was defined by urbandictionary in 2008 as “a time of great warmth, sharing, parties, and of great American commercialism,” folks referred to the early arrival of red and green in stores as “Christmas creep.”
The term entered common parlance in 1968, in a Los Angeles Times article detailing the early arrival of Santa Claus to malls. Holiday celebrations, it seems, begin earlier with each passing year.
Now, Halloween arrives in stores by August. Retail Thanksgiving falls in October, and the Christmas season starts somewhere between late summer and late fall.
And we call it “holiday creep.”
“I think the stores, at least in part, are motivated by the fact that people tend to spend money at the holidays,” said Dr. Elizabeth Bennett, chair of Washington & Jefferson College’s psychology department. “They’re doing it earlier, trying to get us to open our pocketbooks earlier.”
Black Friday used to herald in the holiday shopping season, but Target last month announced its Deal Days: Special sales that run Oct. 6 through 8 online and in stores.
“The holidays are a treasured time when our guests come together with family and friends to celebrate the joy of the season, and we’re here to make that as easy as possible for them to enjoy,” Christina Hennington, executive vice president and chief growth officer, Target, said in a news release. “That’s why we’re rolling out deals earlier than ever and ensuring our team is ready to help our guests shop when and how they want.”
Target announced plans to hire up to 100,000 seasonal team members who will provide “an unmatched holiday shopping experience,” the retailer said.
Not to be outdone, online retail giant Amazon announced its first-ever Prime Early Access Sale, a member-exclusive deals bonanza for early shoppers.
Prime Early Access Sale, which looks a lot like Amazon’s annual Prime Day, runs Oct. 11 and 12. It’s meant to “kick off the holiday season,” Jamil Ghani, vice president of Amazon Prime, said in a news release.
According to a poll conducted last month by the National Retail Federation, 41% of consumers plan to Christmas shop before November begins. Of those shoppers, 38% plan to make holiday purchases earlier in the season than usual.
That’s up from the 36% of consumers who planned to get a jump start on seasonal shopping in 2021.
Big-box and small retailers are playing to their audiences, offering Christmas cheer alongside Thanksgiving decor and Halloween candy. Walmart’s ready for Christmas; Kirkland’s is bedecked in fall and winter décor, and David and Kelly O’Brien, who own Uniontown Liquidation at Uniontown Mall, are already offering holiday layaway.
“She started them, oh, gosh, I think in August. People have started layaways,” said Lou Ann Hunchuck, general manager of Uniontown Mall. “My Bath and Body Works store said that when we have our Halloween event (at the end of October), they’ll be in Christmas mode.”
So, too, will the mall itself: Hunchuck said her staff will deck the halls within the next couple weeks.
“We start about the third week in October, to get all my decorations in the commons hung up,” she said.
Staci Dvorshock, who owns Chloe & Me in Monongahela, started pouring pumpkin candles in August. She normally waits until November to bring out the cozy Christmas scents, but this year, she’s already started selling holiday candles at local craft shows and festivals.
“I was like, I’m done with pumpkin. Let’s just bring them (Christmas scents) out and see how they do,” Dvorshock said. “And people were kind of feeling the same way. I don’t know if it’s because we released them earlier … everyone wants the balsam and fir. Spiced winter tea, it’s selling out right now, and pine.”
Despite memes mocking “holiday creep” and eye rolls when shoppers pass by Christmas lights and reindeer sleighs in October, Americans are more than willing to holiday shop ’til they drop, even if it means peppermint everything before the leaves change.
Christmas in October is practical, considering inflation and lingering pandemic supply chain issues. The NRF reported that for 58% of consumers, holiday sales and promotions are more important this year than last.
It’s also sentimental.
“With the pandemic, one of the things that happened is that a lot of the things that make us feel happy, that make us feel connected to other people, got disrupted,” Bennett said. “As a community, we’re putting up our decorations; there’s a sense of bonding.”
A sense of bonding fuels individual holiday prep, and memories make the initial shock of red and green in early October – prime orange, black and purple season – nostalgic.
“Attitudes have two components. There’s a cognitive piece … and there’s an emotional piece. The cognitive piece of seeing those things out early is, it’s marketing. They’re trying to manipulate me,” said Bennett. “The emotional piece is still that sense of joy we all get from picking out a gift for someone, sharing a gift-giving season. We’re drawn to it, in part, because when we’re in the presence of something, the emotional piece of our attitude tends to be the bigger predictor of our behavior.”
But nostalgia can throw off our sense of time.
“We all use certain kinds of cultural things to think about where we are in the year, and timing of things. When businesses move up the timing, it throws off our sense of the pace of our lives, the pace of the year, what month we’re in, on a micro scale,” said Bennett. “We start to feel behind. The Halloween candy has been out for so long. I keep … thinking to myself, I don’t have candy yet. Should I be worried? I’ve got lots of time. I don’t need to stress about that.”
Some local retailers aren’t stressed about getting ahead. Lowry’s Western Shop, a Washington staple for 50 years, doesn’t plan to decorate for Christmas until at least mid-November, and The Ivy Green flower shop will transition to Christmas a couple weeks before Thanksgiving.
Though Washington Crown Center Mall will have Toys for Tots on site every Saturday in November, and will host a special holiday event in early December, the mall will celebrate Christmas closer to the traditional holiday calendar.
“Santa arrives on Nov. 17,” said Washington Crown Center assistant marketing director Civil Knox.
Santa Claus’ busy season is still weeks away, but America is in full holiday creep mode – and Perkins said not to fight the Hallowthanksmas celebrations.
“Just embrace it. The older you get, the faster it goes,” he said. “Every January first, you’re like, oh, it’s a brand new year and boom, it’s Christmas again. I keep my (holiday) stuff out all year round. People just love it. I think it’s because it’s that coziness to it. You might as well enjoy it.”