Creepy Holiday Creep

In case you haven’t already noticed, the 2010 holiday season has begun.

We’ve been saying for the better part of this decade that Halloween has been growing as a retail holiday of significance – costumes, masks, party goods, greeting cards, candy, home decorating items, et al. Visual merchandisers, who over the years had pretty much narrowed down the seasonality of their craft to Christmas and back-to-school, now suddenly found a spooktacular propping opportunity for ghosts, witches and spider webs.

We’ve also been saying for the better part of this decade that the visual merchandising effort for Christmas has been moving further and further up in the calendar. Getting an earlier and earlier jump on the holiday mood – and holiday sales – retailers have increasingly been setting up their windows and displays well before the Black Friday weekend. So no surprises there.

But now, I read, even Black Friday has been moved up! They’re calling it “Black Friday creep,” which seems appropriate, given its Halloween tie-in. Stores began announcing holiday promotions, sales and specials in mid-October, apparently trying to take advantage of those shoppers who are already in the stores buying their bags of trick-or-treat candies and Dora the Explorer costumes.

And there’s little subtle about it. Sears has been calling its late-October/early-November weekly catalog “Black Friday Now!” Toys “R” Us began putting all the items in its 80-page Christmas toy book on sale the Sunday before Halloween. J.C. Penney will be running holiday specials throughout the month of November, calling them things like the “biggest sale of them all” on November 6, a one-day sale on November 17, a “huge sale” on November 20 and a “day before Thanksgiving” sale on November 24.

It doesn’t require a John Maynard Keynes to analyze this phenomenon. The economy is depressing. Retailers need to sell things. Shoppers want to buy, but need low prices as an inducement.

But here’s another spin on the phenomenon. As writer Sloane Crosley amusingly noted in The New York Times, Halloween has become one of the biggest cultural events in the calendar. Suddenly, there’s the social pressure to choose a clever costume and be invited to the right party. It’s the “what are you wearing/where are you going?” principle.

As Crosley notes, nobody cares where you’re spending Thanksgiving. Aunt Martha’s? That’s nice. But “whose Halloween party have you been invited to?” has become a question fraught with connections to popularity and social standing. As if we ever leave those high school insecurities behind.

So with the intense focus on Halloween as the gateway to the holidays, I just wonder if, by Thanksgiving, everyone will be tired of Christmas – and starting to plan their Super Bowl activities. Get out those Nerf footballs, visual merchandisers! You have some party goods and flat-screen TVs to sell. It’s never too early. Hut-hut-hut.