When is it too early for Christmas decorations?

Natalie Barletta – Opinions Editor

We’ve just finished clearing out our bowls of Halloween candy, however when walking down the aisles of department stores and shopping malls, you’d think that were just a handful of weeks away until Christmas.

Whether it’s Christmas trees, ornaments, and other decorations that are on sale, or just early holiday sales, stores have Christmas on the brain earlier than the leaves begin to change colors.

It seems like Christmas becomes earlier and earlier every year, whether it’s sales telling you to get an early start on your holiday shopping, or stores offering deals that are better than black Friday.

For example, the home shopping networks QVC and HSN offer early Christmas ideas and sales starting in July. QVC offers a Christmas in July sale, which has things from Christmas decorations to gift ideas. After that, every month on the 25th, they will devote 24 hours to holiday items. After November, QVC will air nonstop holiday deals 24/7.

The official holiday season technically doesn’t start until the day after Thanksgiving, and doesn’t end until January seventh. However, the holiday items begin to creep up farther and farther, which now as you can tell, give Halloween a run for its money.

According to the Time article ‘Can Retailers Get Consumers in the Christmas Spirit?’ holiday revenue makes up for at least 40 percent how much a retailer makes in a year, in addition to 80 percent of their total profit.

Needless to say, getting consumers to spend money is key to help them make that profit. Hence, them putting up Christmas decorations earlier than you would decorate Halloween pumpkins often happens.

The article also said that some stores often skip putting up Halloween decorations, and opt to put more Christmas decorations instead. That is a bit frightening as a consumer, although I do understand the reasoning. After all, since stores tend to make more profit with Christmas stuff than Halloween, it makes more sense to invest more money and space in Christmas stuff then Halloween.

Black Friday used to be the most discounted days of the shopping year. However, now stores are marking things earlier and earlier. This means that you’ll no longer feel so inclined to get up in the wee hours of the morning to get a deal, when you can go whenever time fits your schedule to go shopping.

Many people are buying gifts earlier and earlier because of these sales, which helps save them money. Everyone likes to save money right?

Personally, I think that starting to think about Christmas shopping is good to an extent. For starters, as a college student working a part time minimum waged job, planning my Christmas gifts early can help me budget spending by getting one gift or so per paycheck. That way, you can be sure to budget holiday shopping so that you’re not paying for it all at once and getting overwhelmed financially.

However, with that being said, I find it a bit overwhelming that stores are thinking about the holidays so quickly. Whenever I see things such as Christmas decorations up now, I honestly groan because I feel like it’s too early to even consider decking the halls. As a consumer, that turns me off from buying something, because it’s just too early.

My personal opinion is that holiday shopping is something that should roughly start a few weeks before Thanksgiving. That should be when trimmed trees should appear in store windows, and toy stores begin to lower the prices of their toys. Unfortunately, retailers do not agree, which guarantee that Christmas will become earlier and earlier.

Maybe then Christmas in July will become an actual thing.