After working retail for the holiday season as a younger person, and seeing how that started in October...then working in the beer industry, watching seasonal creep pushing those beer releases ever earlier (combined with the ramp up and logistics meaning that we were in full on "get ready for Oktoberfest" mode by mid-April...
I think I was just totally burnt out of any capacity for seasonal creep outrage a decade ago.
I saw a Christmas display while grocery shopping this week. Didn't even register as odd, let alone annoying. Which is saying something, coming from me, who tends to treat getting annoyed about random shit as a sort of relaxing pastime.
It's been like that for years in the UK where Halloween isn't such a big thing. It's usually the last week of August for most shops to start getting stuff out.
The shitty thing is that they take down the Halloween decorations to put them up like excuse me I fuckin need those - disposable stuff gets bought the month of, not 3 months out.I throw a Halloween party but I don't have room to put all that consumable stuff around my apartment for months in advance.
You should see some shops in Australia, they decide to put up a small display for "Christmas in July" then the next thing you know there's no other holidays to protect that display from just becoming a growing Christmas display.... in August!
And it's so lazy because it's still the Christmas in July display at the core, with the actual December Christmas merch expanding out from the it, so there's ugly Christmas sweaters, roasts, and snow men decorations in the the middle, and board shorts, barbecues, thongs* and white boomers* after that.
(thongs are flip flops/sandals, white boomers are albino kangaroos, it's what Santa uses to pull the rusted out ute across the sand because he leaves the reindeer and sleigh for the northern hemisphere.....Australian Christmas is weird)
I saw a pallet of candy corn at Meijer at the end of July. I bought a bag and it turned out to be the most fresh and delicious bag of candy corn I've ever eaten. Then I realized that all the stale candy corn I usually buy around October and am disappointed in is just super old because it sat around for 3 months before being eaten. So I've decided from now on, I will only enjoy candy corn during peak candy corn harvest in late July early August.
Up here in God's country we don't go to no dad-blamed, fancy nancy Meijer store for our candy corn. Hell, no! We drive our trucks to the top of the Devil's Mountain of Screaming Insanity and Painful Death; then we hike fifty seven miles through the Unholy Swamp, cross the Bridge of Savage Disembowelment into the Forbidden Plains of Lugubrious Misery, and then, and only then, after proving our strength and manly worth, do we allow our Mommies to give us the candy corn THEY got at Meijer
Christmas starts in August. It's disgusting. Whenever I point these things out everyone thinks I hate Christmas. I really don't. Christmas joy can't last half a year it's unreasonable. To counter it i only put my tree up 2 weeks before Christmas. I'm not gonna spend all day in Christmas land everywhere then coming home to it.
When I was a kid my family put up the tree the Saturday after Thanksgiving (US), and took it down January 1, all as a family fun thing. I still do that.
They have year-round Christmas stores in some places. Just nothing but Christmas stuff for sale 365 days a year. I always wonder about people who go to such stores in April or May.
The only thing I could think of is people that film stuff, as if you want to make a Christmas episode or movie, you will have to film it way in advanced in order to release it on Christmas.
To be fair Halloween has did a good bit of creeping as well this year. Not a bad thing, I guess. I never am in the mood for it though I like horror movies and shit.
I can feel it, a change in the air, the water runs colder... It's October. But it feels like it's about to be Christmas. I can't help but notice the sensation, warmth yet fridged, the desire for a cup of cider by a warm fire... Even stores have started putting up winter light displays... Do not tell me the old magic has lost it's affect on you young ones, close your eyes, breath deep of Christmas Magic...
Only one solution. Halloween has done its part in keeping October secure. So NaNoWriMo and NNN need to achieve the same level of widespread corporate support that Halloween has.
IMO, Halloween needs to extend into November. The US has Thanksgiving, but it might as well be mini-Christmas at this point. Halloween needs to establish a bulwark.