Holidays like Halloween and Christmas have been turned into month-long events with goods in stores up to two months in advance. That’s fine, I get it. What I don’t get is why I found an entire section of my local Walmart already stocked with red and pink hearts and countless pieces of Hershey’s chocolate just after New Year’s.
Stocking Valentine’s candy more than two weeks early already seems a little iffy, but to have the dedicated aisle prepared by Jan. 1 is bizarre to the point that it seems counterintuitive. Wouldn’t the thought of one-and-a-half month-old candy turn people off from buying it? It seems like stocking food (even if it’s processed chocolate) more than a month in advance is a bad move.
From a business perspective, the reason is simple. Stores make holiday products available early, ostensibly, so they can sell more of them. But it’s also another way to advertise to the customer. One of the ways a store can advertise itself is to show the product long before the day you need to buy it. By bombarding customers with Valentine’s candy in January, the buyer knows where to go to get their candy when February comes around. It’s a way of imprinting on customers’ memory so that they already know where the best place is to shop for Valentine’s candy. They’ve passed that aisle in Walmart or Target 20 times already.
That’s why you’ve got to know about Black Friday sales right at the start of November, why Halloween stores are set up in September and why we start celebrating Christmas before Thanksgiving. We often mock stores for prepping so far in advance, but the truth is that they’re not expecting to make any major sales; it’s just another form of advertising.
This kind of advertisement does more than imprint on our memory. Halloween and Christmas weren’t always month-long celebrations. It’s changed our perception of when these holidays start and stop. We disguise it by calling it the “season.” It’s the Christmas season or Halloween season. It’s what justifies the playing of Christmas tunes in November.
“Season” happens to be a great word for it, considering how easy it is to think of a single year divided into New Year’s Day, Valentine’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day, Easter, Mother’s Day, Independence Day, Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas. It has gotten to the point where the preparations are so far in advance that we essentially ride one holiday into the next, such as with Valentine’s chocolates showing up Jan. 1. This is useful for companies because during certain times of the year we predictably focus on certain commodities, mostly food and ornament based. The longer the holiday is, the more time you have to purchase.