I’m supposed to be promoting Christmas in Pandemonium (Coming out October 15!) right now, but I’m supposed to be doing a lot of things right now. Instead, I’m griping about a relatively new phenomenon: Halloween Creep. Yes, you’ve heard of Christmas Creep. This is its ridiculous cousin.

So, I picked my kid up from daycare on Friday, and I see they’ve already got Halloween decorations out on the front lawn of the daycare…and in the hallways…and in the classrooms. Yesterday, we took the kids to Home Depot, and they’ve already set up a huge display of Halloween decorations (you know, the really creepy ones) towards the front of the store. The Halloween Express has already opened in the mini-mall next to my home. People, we’re a week from Labor Day. People should not be celebrating Halloween this early.

As you may know if you’ve read this blog before (and if you have, hey Tom) I’ve taken a stand against Christmas creep, which is the practice of celebrating Christmas in November. Previously, I’ve used Halloween as an example of a superior holiday, one which is less coercive and therefore, more fun than the mandatory cheerfulness of Christmas. Then I decided to release a book called Christmas in Pandemonium in October, making me a massive hypocrite. Oh well.

The problem as I see it is that we are quickly turning Halloween into Christmas insofar as we are celebrating it earlier and earlier every year, for obviously commercial reasons. I don’t think that our premature yard decorations have anything to do with Halloween being declared part of secondary Triduum by the Vatican, do you? This will ruin Halloween through overexposure and subtle cultural pressure to conform much like it ruined Christmas, and much like Thanksgiving couldn’t stop Christmas, Labor Day won’t be able to forestall pumpkin carving in August.

You can almost see corporate America’s plan now, can’t you? Did you notice that they start hanging American flags everywhere almost immediately after Easter? Oh, they say it’s for VE Day, which gives them a good excuse to leave them up until VJ Day. With the 4th of July, Memorial Day, and now Juneteenth in between, we may as well call Summer the patriotic months and just get used to corporations selling us Red, White, and Blue paper plates, nick-nacks, and stuffed bears for a solid four months.

That’s not even getting into Easter, where they start selling you the Bunny-themed material in February, or what used to be called Lent rather ironically. With Christmas beginning in November and ending mid-January, all you need is Valentine’s Day for a month (sorry St. Patrick) and now the retailers have gotten us into permanent holiday mode. Hell, maybe even Valentine’s Day will get phased out, and then you have four holiday seasons, covering the entire year, approximately three months each. The Four and Half Holidays of the Shopocalypse will soon dominate American Culture.

We don’t need longer holiday seasons; we need more holidays with more traditions. Unfortunately, while Capitalism has a lot of advantages, it has the disadvantage of steering popular culture to whatever marketing executive think will make the most money. I think we need to claw back a healthier holiday culture.

Also, buy Christmas in Pandemonium on October 15!

Shameless, just shameless.