Decorating early: since Labor Day doesn’t have a visual, it’s time to say BOO.

I haven’t indulged in this subject for a little while, but from time to time it’s hard for me to resist: the strategy (or lack thereof) of seasonal and holiday displays at various businesses.  Many businesses make it a point of greeting customers with both products that are relevant for the season, holiday, or even major sporting event, while an equal number of businesses sell the requisite decor and paraphernalia supporting those displays.  Some large operations sell both, and it’s hard not to wonder if one hand washes the other in many occasions: that is, a food-centric business selling Easter candy buys promotional tchotchkes from a crafts shop, which in turn purchases Easter candy from a supermarket wholesaler.  Both types of business capitalize on holidays as a deviation from the usual calendar day to draw attention to special sales.  All fine and good.  I have no problem letting businesses decide what’s best for themselves.  Fundamentally, I feel much the same way with private residences: the unifying feature is “private”, which is a signal to me to butt out.  But decorating early has started to evolve from whimsical to pathological.

I won’t begrudge this homeowner, and I’m certainly not going to dox him or her, so no location details this time around.  But it’s hard not to wonder what prompted or inspired the embellishments at this doorway, which I encountered in late August:

That’s right: here it is late August, and it’s time to bust out the Halloween decorations.  To be fair, this particular resident is merely aligning his/her doorway with the commercial timetable of various arts-and-crafts category killers, which started breaking out the knickknacks earlier in the month, or maybe a few even in late July.  And while the winter, spring, and early summer offer a panoply of celebratory events—Christmas, New Year’s Day, Valentine’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day, Easter, graduation, and Independence Day—the late summer and early fall represents much more of a lull in holidays.  (Cinco de Mayo and Juneteenth haven’t quite yet achieved widespread decorative cachet, but give them time.  Nobody really decorated for Thanksgiving either when I was a kid.)  August is the only month of the year with no widely recognized days of celebration, and while September and early October do offer important days (particularly sacred holidays in the Jewish calendar) and federal holidays, few if any prompt decorations or food until All Hallow’s Eve.  

But then, come late summer, American retailers go feral at the full moon, prompting the culture of decorating early to reach this fever pitch.  September signals the start of the season where storekeeping succubi seduce simpletons out of their savings, in the form of highly disposable and unecological bric-a-brac: cheap candy (individually wrapped for trick-or-treaters), paper decorations, plastic costumes.  Around the turn of the 21st century, when Halloween morphed from an innocent kiddie tradition to a consumerist bonanza, complete with adult-sized costumes and less wholesome party themes, it emerged as an industry: nine months of planning; three months of sales.  And three months spawns specialized sales, which in turn becomes the impetus for decorating early. To the best of my recollection, the witching season represents the first nationwide initiative for opportunistic vendors to vampirize the wallets and purses, through pop-up establishments, for which temporary Halloween-themed category killers have demonically possessed the shells of former suburban stalwart brands, like the Circuit City I covered years ago.  Yes, those of us who grew up in states where fireworks are largely legal would see something similar in May and June in preparation for the Fourth, but that is less widespread—many jurisdictions don’t allow unlicensed fireworks—and they tended to operate out of very short-term canopies rather than leasing space in strip malls.  But Halloween pop-ups are everywhere.  (And, lest one focuses too much on the retail wraiths, it is a horror among horrors to neglect the haunted houses.)

For those who think I’m brushing over the consumerist excesses of other holidays, I just can’t imagine any other where people roll out the decorations more than two months in advance.  Christmas is huge, but it was big forty and seventy years ago.  And even the department stores—what’s left of them in 2026—don’t usually break out too much Christmas stuff until right before or (preferably) after Halloween.  Some, like Nordstrom, refuse to decorate for Christmas until after Thanksgiving.  Halloween really is the holiday that vaulted itself into the stratosphere.  Decorating early is now a Halloween thing.  The proof is in the pudding, or, in this case, the Pixy Stix.  Here’s a Dollar Tree near me, from just a few days ago:

I’d estimate that about one-fifth of the leasable space is devoted to Halloween decorations, and since many of the shelves at this location were strangely empty (perhaps following the Aldi logistics method?) the percentage of Halloween-affiliated merchandise is probably closer to 40 or even 50%.  The more generalized autumnal decorations are meager by comparison, even though the first day of fall is only a few weeks away.

Keep in mind, this is the image of a Dollar Tree in late August.  Who can imagine how many more shelves will hold spooky schlock in six weeks?  Perhaps a secularizing culture has prompted a greater collective adoration of a formerly religious holiday stripped to all but its pagan roots.  Or maybe the allure of the occult—the pursuit of knowledge by any means necessary—leaps across any rigidly defined expressions of religious faith.  Or some Americans with extra money to burn (which, let’s face it, is most Americans) just love seasonal decorations in general, and the lack of any other big visual holidays between July and October prompts decorating early.  Regardless of the reasoning, I generally think Halloween gets a longer celebratory window to fill the late summer doldrums; if another holiday had such a dry spell beforehand, that would be the one to adorn the doorway of the householder in the initial photo.

Give the other holidays time to assert themselves, and I’ll document decorating early for them as well. My closest Dollar Tree was exclusively fall-themed, but other parts of the country have observed something else.  In August.  Seasons’ greetings!  (And yes, in this case, the apostrophe goes after the S.)