…everywhere you go. Or at least every store that you go to is beginning to look a lot like Christmas. Harumph and bah-humbug all you want, it’s a fact of modern life and it really does make sense. Yes, it may drive many of us crazy having Christmas stuff out before Halloween, but it does make sense.

I can remember when we used to not see any Christmas stuff until after Thanksgiving, and yes that gives away my age. Every year for many years, the holiday seasons have been blending together, led by the retail world. Starting with the big department stores, and trickling down to almost all retail stores, the push to be the first to have the new items for Christmas on your shelves has been all consuming. The drive to get the consumer in to your store to see, if not quite yet to buy is huge.

This drive goes back many years. I can remember when we used to get the sears & JC Penney’s Christmas catalogs in the mail, about a week or two before Thanksgiving. It was so much fun as a kid to pour over each page, dreaming of what we might get and making lists for Santa. That was in Loveland thirty-some-odd years ago, long before we had many stores to choose from. Well, if you haven’t noticed, Loveland has grown a wee bit in those thirty years. The explosion of retail in the last few years has really made it necessary for all stores to get their goods out in full view, so any and all shoppers can see all the items they want to put on their lists.

There is not a lot going on in the retail world in late September through mid November. It’s just a fact of the seasons, the climate, schools, etc. Summer merchandise has sold, winter merchandise isn’t selling yet. Better than having bare floor space and bare shelves is to get Christmas stuff out. This is especially true for the big-box stores who will have thousands of square feet set aside for seasonal items.

All the stores have their Christmas stuff to put out at this time of year as well. This is another change from twenty-thirty years ago. In fact our back rooms are often bursting with boxes that were delivered as early as June. This is the global effect of Christmas. Back when our goods were shipped from the Midwest, stores would order in June or July for an October-November delivery. Now that our goods are shipped from the Far East, stores order in Jan-Feb for deliveries in mid summer. Nobody wants to put a later ship date on an order to have it held up on the water or the docks and arrive too late. Wholesalers have pushed their ordering to just after the previous season in an attempt to be the first to get sales.

The thing to remember is that Christmas is not big business anymore, it is HUGE business. It is global business; it is business that keeps many stores alive, open and profitable for an entire year. I’m not saying it’s good or bad, and I’m not trying to debate the religious aspect of it. Yes, it can drive me crazy, as it can anyone in retail. I’ve been known to lead the bah-humbug bandwagon many times. Try and keep all these things in mind when you go in to any store in October that has Christmas stuff out.

Also, why is it that nobody ever gripes about seeing garden stuff come out in January?

 

-Clark