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Christmas creep is a merchandising phenomenon in which merchants and retailers introduce Christmas-themed merchandise or decorations before the traditional start of the holiday shopping season, which in the United States is on the day after Thanksgiving. [1] The term was first used in the mid-1980s. [2]
The phenomenon is associated with a desire of merchants to take advantage of particularly heavy Christmas-related shopping well before Black Friday in the United States and before Remembrance Day in Canada. The term Black Friday was not used until recently in the UK and Ireland; its increased usage can be traced to the internet being more widespread, as well as growing Americanization, as neither country celebrates Thanksgiving. Previously, retailers referred to Christmas as the "golden quarter", that is, the three months of October through December is the quarter of the year in which the retail industry hopes to make the most profit. [3] The lack of Thanksgiving as a "barrier" between holidays has caused several retailers to put up Christmas sales earlier in the year. For instance, Irish retailer Brown Thomas opens its Christmas store in mid-August. This phenomenon can apply for other holidays as well, notably Chinese New Year, Valentine's Day, Mardi Gras, Saint Patrick's Day, Easter, Mother's Day, Father's Day, Bastille Day, Columbus Day, Diwali, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Rosh Hashanah, the Mid-Autumn Festival, and many dozens of others. The motivation for holiday creep is for retailers to lengthen their selling interval for seasonal merchandise in order to maximize profit and to give early-bird shoppers a head start on that holiday. However, it is not clear that this practice has been consistently beneficial for retailers. [4]
Seasonal creep is not limited to the northern hemisphere winter holiday season and other popular holidays and observances, but is also becoming more common for merchandise associated with a general season of the year. Advertising for winter-, spring-, summer-, and fall-related goods generally now begins midway through the previous season. For example, many supermarkets in the United Kingdom begin selling Easter eggs even before Christmas, and in the US, stores begin selling 4th of July products before Easter, and the next major holiday is marketed as soon as or before the previous has ended. In Canada, there have been protests that marking the Christmas season should be refrained until after the solemn commemorations of Remembrance Day November 11 have been concluded. [5] [6] The phenomenon is also known as "holiday creep". [7]
In Australia, shops have been known to have their Christmas merchandise available as early as late September, mainly because older Australians generally don't celebrate Halloween compared to younger Australians, though by the 2010s, Halloween merchandise has cropped up alongside Christmas merchandise during the same periods. The department store David Jones Limited even begins selling Christmas merchandise at the start of September.[ citation needed ]
Marketing for Christmas sales has begun in early Autumn since the late 1800s in the United States. [8] An emporium in Kansas City, Missouri named Bullene, Moore, Emery & Company sparked a preholiday rush that "packed every square foot of the store" on November 16, 1888. Promotion for an "Early Christmas Event" in 1893 by a retailer in Salt Lake City, Utah retailer read: "This is no joke. We mean it. We will do it … MONDAY, MONDAY, MONDAY." [9] In 1918 the Council of National Defense pushed early Christmas buying to ameliorate transport and labor shortages caused by World War I, urging patriotic Americans to "Take the Crush out of Your Christmas Shopping and Put It Into Winning the War" with advertisements of Santa in "doughboy" uniform. [8]
Further stimulus for early holiday gift buying came with what came to be called "Franksgiving" in 1939, 1940, and 1941 when President Franklin D. Roosevelt moved the celebration of Thanksgiving forward a week in order to help boost retail sales by prolonging the Christmas shopping season. This was followed by the sending of millions of American fighting men overseas in 1942 to engage in World War II. As a result, the U.S. Post Office Department called on those at home to send all Christmas mail addressed to men in uniform abroad by November 1. To comply with this request, Americans began shopping for Christmas in September and did not quit after the mailing deadline. As a newspaper in St. Louis, Missouri noted, "this first burst of Christmas buying put shoppers in the mood for winding up their annual stint early, now that they had started." [9]
Much more recently, the hardware chain Lowe's as well as Home Depot provided impetus for it in 2000 with a policy of setting out Christmas trees and decorations by October 1, mainly because the Halloween and Thanksgiving holidays do not provide enough merchandise or sales to fill retail space between the end of the summer season and the Christmas season.[ citation needed ] In 2002–2003, Christmas creep accelerated markedly with retailers such as Walmart, J. C. Penney, and Target beginning their Christmas sales in October. [10] In 2006 the National Retail Federation, an industry trade group, said that 40 percent of consumers planned to start their holiday shopping before Halloween. Since the 2010s, there has been a growing trend for retailers to start selling holiday merchandise in mid- to late-September, with retailers such as Walmart, Sam's Club, Kmart, Costco, J.C. Penney, Sears, and Lowe's now beginning their Christmas sales earlier than October 1. [11]
Christmas creep has also been cited as a phenomenon in radio broadcasting. Prior to the early 21st century, radio stations commonly began adding some Christmas songs to their regular playlists in early December and then playing an all-Christmas playlist on December 24 and 25.[ citation needed ] In 2000 [12] [13] some stations began playing an exclusively Christmas format for the entire month of December, a practice that became more widespread in 2001. In subsequent years, such stations have commonly shifted to an all-Christmas playlist after Thanksgiving, or even several weeks earlier. [14] A handful of American radio stations [15] have, since 2006, earned a reputation for regularly switching to Christmas music on November 1, the day after Halloween; as of 2011, this has not become the norm for most of North America (most stations have typically changed on or around Veterans, Remembrance and Armistice Day on November 11; for example, iHeartMedia used November 10 as the standard launch date for most of its approximately 90 Christmas format flips in 2023). [16] Earlier flips to Christmas music were noted in 2020 (the first station that year flipped in late September), as broadcasters sought to alleviate some of the stress brought by the COVID-19 pandemic. [17] [18]
A sudden reversal of this trend occurred as the pandemic waned in 2022, as no station would adopt the all-Christmas format until October 28—and that station, the lone station to flip before November 1, had largely gone unnoticed until October 30; the trade Web site Radio Insight, which tracks the first-in-the-nation Christmas flips, erroneously stated that "it appears we will make it to Halloween without a radio station already having started playing Christmas music." [19] In general, this later start was also observed in 2023; Radio Insight and Inside Radio both noted that the first station each noticed had changed to Christmas music was WMXL in Lexington, Kentucky, which did so at midnight October 31. (An additional station, WMGA in Kenova, West Virginia, had flipped on October 19, but this change was a stunt tied to the station's upcoming format change after Christmas.) [20] [21] Most outlets stopped tracking who was first in 2024, and Radio Insight counted a pre-acknowledged stunt by WLRS that began October 1 as the first; [22] that year, among non-stunting stations, WLKK-HD2 changed on October 10, [23] while the October 25 change of K252FO (a relay of KKGO-FM-HD2) was the first of an analog signal, [24] and no non-stunting, full-power AM or FM signal was known to make the switch until October 31, when WAKW in Cincinnati, Ohio made the switch. [25] Radio Insight noted that while the creeping of early Christmas flips had largely stopped at October 31, more stations had flipped that day or in the first week of November than in years past. [26]
Some of the channels on the cable radio service Music Choice begin playing Christmas music continually from the end of Halloween up until the first week of January (in light of the consequences of the Internet age, the network maintains an exclusive Christmas music channel through some providers and their TV Everywhere platform year-round). Likewise, the U.S. cable channel Hallmark Channel usually begins its "Countdown to Christmas" programming event (a continuous marathon of original Christmas movies) on November 1. In 2010, ABC Family began to air some holiday-related programming in mid-November under the banner "Countdown to 25 Days of Christmas"; as a prelude to its main "25 Days of Christmas" event. [27] [28] The network, renamed Freeform, renamed the programming block "Kickoff to Christmas" in 2018, expanding it so that it encompasses the entire month of November (Freeform cannot move the block into October because its existing "31 Nights of Halloween" event, which had itself expanded from its original 13 days). Freeform dropped the Kickoff to Christmas in 2023 in favor of a "30 Nights of Disney" event. [29]
"It is inappropriate to the consumer to be pushing December holiday purchasing in September and October," states David Katz, chief marketing officer with Randa Apparel & Accessories, maker of Levi's, Tommy Hilfiger, and other popular brands. "If I'm going to have a four-month holiday season, I'm not as driven to buy now," he adds. "You lose the sense of urgency and immediacy." [7]
"We're going to be old fashioned and have Thanksgiving first, and we'll decorate for Christmas afterward … seems just more like Americana and less like propaganda," blared a 1953 advertisement placed by a department store in Tacoma, Washington. [9]
"We see these decorations a month and a half before the holiday arrives and when it does come, we're so sick and tired of the lights and trimmings, we pay no attention to them, and the whole atmosphere is dull at the time it should be cheerful," stated H. Earle Garzee in a letter to the La Crosse Tribune in 1947. [9]
This market trend is satirized in the 1974 animated special It's the Easter Beagle, Charlie Brown , when the characters go shopping at a department store and discover that it has its Christmas displays up in the middle of April, including a sign forewarning that there were only a mere 246 days left until Christmas. Additionally, in 1973's A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving , Sally complains that she was looking for a turkey tree for Thanksgiving but had only found Christmas supplies.
Several songs satirize the phenomenon, including Loudon Wainwright III's "Suddenly It's Christmas" (from his 1993 live album Career Moves ), Straight No Chaser's "The Christmas Can-Can" (from their 2009 album Christmas Cheers ), Paul and Storm's "The Way-Too-Early Christmas Song" (from their 2010 album Do You Like Star Wars? ). Christian singer/songwriter Brandon Heath voiced his feelings on Christmas creep in the song "The Day After Thanksgiving" (from his 2013 album Christmas Is Here ). Randy Brooks, best known as the author of "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer," recorded "It's Halloween (A Christmas Song)," which remarked upon the increasing trend of entering the Christmas season immediately after Halloween ends, facetiously forgetting what Thanksgiving is, lamenting the season is only eight weeks long, noting that Valentine's Day celebrations will begin on December 26, and musing that next year's Christmas celebrations might begin on Labor Day.
In Jim Butcher's 2012 novel Cold Days , Santa Claus himself declares that he's drawing the line at Halloween.
On October 7, 2015, radio station WURV in Richmond, Virginia satirized the phenomenon of Christmas creep by airing a twelve-hour stunt of "inappropriately early" Christmas music. [30] [31]
Christmas music comprises a variety of genres of music regularly performed or heard around the Christmas season. Music associated with Christmas may be purely instrumental, or, in the case of carols, may employ lyrics about the nativity of Jesus Christ, traditions such as gift-giving and merrymaking, cultural figures such as Santa Claus, or other topics. Many songs simply have a winter or seasonal theme, or have been adopted into the canon for other reasons.
Black Friday is the Friday after Thanksgiving in the United States. It traditionally marks the start of the Christmas shopping season in the United States. Many stores offer highly promoted sales at discounted prices and often open early, sometimes as early as midnight or even on Thanksgiving. Some stores' sales continue to Monday or for a week.
Merchandising is any practice which contributes to the sale of products to a retail consumer. At a retail in-store level, merchandising refers to displaying products that are for sale in a creative way that entices customers to purchase more items or products.
Stunting is a type of publicity stunt in radio broadcasting, where a station—abruptly and often without advance announcement—begins to air content that is seemingly uncharacteristic compared to what is normally played.
KQQL is a commercial radio station serving the Minneapolis-St. Paul radio market and is licensed to suburban Anoka. It plays classic hits and is owned by iHeartMedia, Inc. The studios and offices are on Utica Avenue South in St. Louis Park.
WMYX-FM is a commercial radio station in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, US. Calling itself "99-1 The Mix", it was the first station in the U.S. to use the "Mix" moniker. WMYX-FM has been airing roughly the same hot adult contemporary radio format since late 1981. The station is owned by Audacy, Inc., along with sister stations WXSS-FM and WSSP. WMYX's studios and transmitter are co-located in Hales Corners. The playlist consists of current hits and recent hits from the 2000s and 2010s. WMYX is responsible for the activation of the Milwaukee metropolitan area Emergency Alert System.
WRIT-FM is a radio station in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, owned by iHeartMedia, Inc. It carries a classic hits radio format, switching to Christmas music for much of November and December. The rest of the year, WRIT focuses on hits from the 1980s and 1990s, along with a few '60s, '70s and early 2000s titles. WRIT is used as an overflow for sports coverage when there are conflicts on co-owned sports radio station WRNW 97.3 with Wisconsin Badgers football and basketball or Green Bay Packers football.
WDZH is a commercial radio station licensed to Detroit, Michigan and serving the Metropolitan Detroit radio market in Southeastern Michigan. It is owned by Audacy, Inc. and airs an alternative rock radio format.
WWIZ is a commercial radio station in West Middlesex, Pennsylvania, United States, serving the Youngstown, Ohio market with an oldies format. Between 2019 and 2022 WWIZ flipped to all Christmas music, branded as Christmas 104, but the Christmas music was mixed in with the regular Oldies format in 2023, rather than a total flip of its format in years prior.
The Christmas season or the festive season; also known as the holiday season or the holidays, is an annual period generally spanning from late November or December to early January. Incorporating Christmas Day and New Year's Day, the various celebrations during this time create a peak season for the retail sector extending to the end of the period. Christmas window displays and Christmas tree lighting ceremonies are customary traditions in various locales.
WRFX is a commercial radio station licensed to Kannapolis, North Carolina and serving the Charlotte metropolitan area. Owned by iHeartMedia, it airs a classic rock radio format, and calls itself "99.7 The Fox." The radio studios and offices are on Woodridge Center Drive in South Charlotte. WRFX is the flagship station for the John Boy and Billy Big Show, a nationally syndicated morning show heard around the country.
WEJZ is a commercial radio station licensed to Jacksonville, Florida. It is owned by Renda Media and airs a mainstream adult contemporary radio format. WEJZ is the Jacksonville affiliate for the syndicated Delilah show. Between mid-November and December 25 each year, the station switches to all-Christmas music.
WMTX is a commercial radio station in Tampa, Florida, known as "Mix 100.7". It has an adult contemporary radio format, switching to Christmas music for much of November and December. It is owned by iHeartMedia, with its studios and offices on Gandy Boulevard in Tampa. WMTX serves as the primary Emergency Alert System station for the Tampa Bay area.
KXBG is a radio station licensed to Cheyenne, Wyoming. Owned by iHeartMedia, it broadcasts a country format targeting the Fort Collins-Greeley, Colorado, area. Its studios are located in Loveland, Colorado.
WTRV is a commercial radio station broadcasting an adult contemporary radio format. The station is licensed to Walker, Michigan, and serves the Grand Rapids metropolitan area radio market. WTRV is a Class A station, so it is limited to 3,000 watts. Its signal can be heard as far south as Otsego, far east as Ionia, and as far north as Fremont.
WMGA is a classic hits and oldies formatted broadcast radio station licensed to Kenova, West Virginia, serving Huntington, West Virginia, Ironton, Ohio, and Ashland, Kentucky. WMGA is licensed to Fifth Avenue Broadcasting Company, Inc.
WMXL is a commercial FM radio station licensed to Lexington, Kentucky. The station is owned by iHeartMedia, Inc., who determines its programming in New York using automation, non-local talent, and airs an adult contemporary radio format, switching to Christmas music for much of November and December.
KOEZ is a commercial radio station broadcasting a soft adult contemporary music radio format, switching to Christmas music for part of November and December. Licensed to Ames, Iowa, the station serves the Des Moines metropolitan area. The station is owned by Saga Communications, and operates as part of its Des Moines Radio Group. The station's studios are located on Locust Street in Des Moines, while its transmitter is located near Woodward.
WMOV-FM is a commercial radio station in Norfolk, Virginia, serving Hampton Roads. It carries a rhythmic adult contemporary radio format and is owned by iHeartMedia, Inc.. The studios and offices are in Greenbrier.
The economics of Christmas are significant because Christmas is typically a high-volume selling season for goods suppliers around the world. Sales increase dramatically as people purchase gifts, decorations, and supplies to celebrate. In the U.S., the "Christmas shopping season" starts as early as October. In Canada, merchants begin advertising campaigns just before Halloween, and step up their marketing following Remembrance Day on 11 November. In the UK and Ireland, the Christmas shopping season starts from mid-November, around the time when high street Christmas lights are turned on. In the United States, it has been calculated that about one fifth of retail sales to one quarter of all personal spending takes place during the Christmas/holiday shopping season. Figures from the U.S. Census Bureau reveal that expenditure in department stores nationwide rose from $20.8 billion in November 2004 to $31.9 billion in December 2004, an increase of 54 percent. In other sectors, the pre-Christmas increase in spending was even greater, due to a November through December buying surge of 100% in bookstores and 170% in jewelry stores. In the same year employment in American retail stores rose from 1.6 million to 1.8 million in the two months leading up to Christmas. This means that while consumers might spend more during this season, they also are given increased employment opportunities as sales rise to meet the increased demand.
And so does the culture, with a commercializing of himself that Santa deplores even as he has watched the holiday season creep back to Labor Day.
The term Christmas creep was first used in the mid-eighties, though gained wider recognition more recently, possibly due to subsequent coinage of the expression mission creep.
Wharton marketing scholars and other analysts say an extended Christmas season is something of a mixed bag. It may hold advantages, disadvantages — or even no advantages — for store owners.
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