Christmas creep
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Christmas creep is the commercial phenomenon of merchants and retailers exploiting the commercialized status of Christmas by moving up the start of the holiday shopping season.[1] The term was first used in the mid 1980s.[2]
It is associated with a desire of merchants to take advantage of particularly heavy Christmas-related shopping well before Black Friday in the US and before Halloween in Canada, Ireland and the UK. It can apply for other holidays as well, notably Valentine's Day, Easter and Mother's Day. The motivation for holiday creep is for retailers to lengthen their selling season for seasonal merchandise in order to maximize profit and to give early-bird shoppers a headstart on that holiday. However, it is not clear that this practice has been consistently beneficial for retailers.[3]
In U.S. retail, the phenomenon was pioneered by stores like Sams Club, which introduced early Christmas sales to support resellers. The hardware chain Lowe's followed 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. In 2002-2003, Christmas creep accelerated markedly with retailers such as Wal-Mart, J.C. Penney, and Target beginning their Christmas sales in October.[4] In 2006 the National Retail Federation, an industry trade group, said that 40 percent of consumers planned to start their holiday shopping before Halloween. In the case of Christmas, the increasing use of the word holiday instead of Christmas within the past few decades has allowed merchants to distribute seasonal merchandise without specifically mentioning the name of the holiday earlier without making Christmas seem too obvious. Since around 1990, Thanksgiving has practically been merged with the December holidays[citation needed].
In Australia, shops have been known to have their Christmas merchandise available as early as late September, due to the fact that Halloween is not widely celebrated. The department store, David Jones Limited even begins selling Christmas merchandise at the start of September.
Seasonal creep is not limited to the 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.
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, but in 2001 some stations began playing an exclusively Christmas format for the entire month of December. In subsequent years, such stations have commonly shifted to an all-Christmas playlist after Thanksgiving, or even several weeks earlier.
Some of the channels in the television U.S. cable channel chain Music Choice begin playing Christmas music continually from the end of Halloween up until the first week of January.
Christmas creep is known as the golden quarter in the UK. That is, the three months of October through December is the quarter of the year in which the retail industry hopes to make most money.
This market trend is parodied in It's the Easter Beagle, Charlie Brown where the character go shopping at Macy's and most of the gang are disgusted 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.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ Siewers, Alf (1987-11-25). "He's well-suited to enjoying life of Santa". Chicago Sun-Times. http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Archives?p_product=CSTB&p_theme=cstb&p_action=search&p_maxdocs=200&p_topdoc=1&p_text_direct-0=0EB36D9911BB108A&p_field_direct-0=document_id&p_perpage=10&p_sort=YMD_date:D&s_trackval=GooglePM. Retrieved 2007-12-26. "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."
- ^ Maxwell, Kerry (2006-09-18). "Macmillan English Dictionary Word Of The Week Archive - "Christmas creep"". New Words. Macmillan Publishers. http://www.macmillandictionary.com/New-Words/060918-Christmas-creep.htm. Retrieved 2007-12-26. "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."
- ^ "Christmas Creep: The Shopping Season Is Longer, but Is It Better?". Knowledge@Wharton. Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. 2006-03-01. http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=1330. Retrieved 2007-12-27. "But 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."
- ^ Christmas Creeps Into Stores, San Diego Union-Tribune, October 25, 2006. Accessed November 18, 2007.
[edit] Further reading
- Kelly, John (2008-11-20). "It's Not the Eggnog Talking: Christmas Is Starting Earlier". Washington Post: p. B03. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/19/AR2008111903883.html. Retrieved 2008-12-01.
- Kelly, John (2008-11-24). "Earlier Christmas Displays Just a Friendly Reminder". Washington Post: p. B03. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/23/AR2008112302040.html. Retrieved 2008-12-01.
