For years I have heard people complain about how the Christmas holiday gets stretched out earlier and earlier. Christmas shopping starts in June, the decorations are put up two weeks before September and carolers are outside your porch singing Jingle Bells on October 1st. However this year, I have noticed that the Halloween season started early!
Maybe people are so dismayed by the hurt, sadness and uncertainty in the world, that they feel the need to have more fantasy in their lives. Holidays, of every type, bring feelings of nostalgia and joy to *most* people. Perhaps by putting those decorations up a couple days earlier every year it helps extend the joy, excitement and fun. This is also might be why the decorations are becoming more elaborate year after year.
For Christmas, we all had that one house in the neighborhood like the Griswold’s. Now, there are home haunts and elaborate yard displays popping up all over. It’s almost like Halloween is the new Christmas (in the way of showing your spirit via lights, moving characters and other yard ornaments). When I was little my mom would put a few cardboard cut outs on the walls and set out some candy corn in a little ghost shaped bowl. These few things might have gone up about a week before Halloween. Now I see several houses in my neighborhood who really go all out for Halloween. Fog machines, black lights, extravagant blow up spiders, LED shows set to music…this has gone above and beyond the generic cotton spider web on your hedges and they start making an appearance the last few weeks of September.
The ability to purchase these ghastly ghost and goblin decorations has become easy. Stores are surely turning a profit with creative ways of getting into the Halloween spirit with outdoor and indoor decorations. There’s something for everyone at your local dollar, drug and big box store-gore to kid friendly, elaborate to simple, breaking the bank to easy on the pocketbook.
Even my local gas station has really gone all out for Halloween decorations. It was like walking into Tim Burton’s Halloweentown starting in mid-September! There are a variety of orange and black adornments hanging from the ceiling, a huge spider holding a Reese’s over the register and several other spooky spangle embellishments in the store, it’s really hard to go anywhere else to fill up my gas tank because the festive spirit is contagious. Even the gas pumps and landscaping are decorated with pumpkins, witches and yellow caution tape.
If you haven’t put out the pumpkins and bats, what are you waiting for?! Some people complain about decorating “too early” but I’ve never heard of a law pertaining to how early a person or business can start hanging Halloween decorations. Christmas, however, should definitely wait until after November 1st. Any earlier than that and it’s just ridiculous.
