How Early Is Too Early to Market Holidays?

This past weekend, a friend of mine was telling me about how she’s already started buying Christmas presents for her family, and I looked at her like, “Seriously?” She explained that she has a lot of family to shop for and I just thought, “Man, Christmas just seems to creep up earlier and earlier every single year.” I’m already reading online tidbits about Christmas decorations going up at Target – in the middle of October! After Halloween it seems like anything goes, but is it too early to be marketing the holidays already (if they need marketing at all)?

Here’s a number to chew on: pre-Christmas sales last year totaled $584.3 billion. Wow! That’s a crazy amount of money being spent before the actual holiday starts. How many people do you know who end up using summer sales as an excuse to get their Christmas shopping done? I have a few friends who do that, just as a deterrent because they don’t want to deal with the crowds during the actual holiday.

What is that saying about our culture when people are already thinking about the holidays six months before the actual day? Has marketing and advertising permeated our consciousness so deeply that holiday shopping is constantly in the back of our minds? Are we thinking of friends and family more in terms of what we can buy for them, and when we can buy stuff? The next time you see an early Christmas in a store or even online, take a minute to think about what all that marketing and advertising is planting in your mind. You don’t have to spend all that money, especially if you feel guilty for not giving in!

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