Christmas Season Starting Earlier: Does It Lead to Holiday Burnout?

I’ll admit it: I’m not always a Christmas person. In the past I’ve had my moments of seasonal depression, and as much as I promise myself I’ll feel sunny and upbeat over the holidays, Christmas sometimes makes me feel a little blue. Even when nothing’s wrong, and I should feel on top of the world, there gets to be a point over the holidays when the rows and rows of Christmas merchandise and glittering Christmas trees start to close in on me and I can’t even breathe.

So imagine my horror when retailers declared that Christmas was going to start even earlier this year. Sure when August rolls around, you’ll see the retailers start to haul out some modest displays of Christmas ornaments, but they usually weave them in discretely among the tidal wave of fall pumpkins and Halloween merchandise.

But one morning I woke up this year and it was full on Christmas merchandising in all my local stores. It wasn’t even the middle of October, but local malls were having big discount Christmas sales, and evidently it was working, because local news reports showed shoppers descending on the mall, loaded down with bargains at prices too good to pass up. On top of that, one day when I went through the speedy checkout at the local grocery store, the employees there were wearing fuzzy Santa hats, and it wasn’t even close to the Halloween holiday!

I flipped by the home shopping channels QVC and HSN, and both were dueling to see who could cram the most Christmas trees and holiday garlands on a soundstage. On these channels, a clock frequently flashes on the air during Christmas season, one that shows how many shopping days until Christmas (a clock that program hosts say strikes fear into the hearts of holiday shoppers everywhere, because as days tick by, they’re running out of time to get that perfect holiday gift!)

In the past few years, I’ve noticed that stores are putting up their holidays displays a little earlier. But it’s nothing compared to the Christmas push I’ve witnessed this year, as retailers hope to survive the recession by declaring that the Christmas shopping season is at least two months long. With money so tight, and those expenses like big fuel bills on the horizon, the thinking is to get the consumer to buy things earlier and earlier in the season, when they hopefully have more disposable cash to spend.