Help, My Fall Has Been Hijacked!

Am I mistaken, or are there still thirty-eight (count 'em, as of this writing on Sept 22nd) shopping days until Halloween? And where, pray tell, have all the Halloween super-stores come from? I turned around and they have suddenly appeared on every corner like an orange-and-black Starbucks-esque franchise taking over the retail world. I had envisioned a more uplifting replacement for the shopping space that the local Circuit City once occupied. Now instead of buying an Apple I can bob for apples.

OK, I know Halloween has increasingly become a bigger and bigger event over the years. But in my memory, only Christmas used to occupy such a nostalgic and important place in American culture as to justify a whole season dedicated to the event. Don't we all actually need a whole month or more to write all the Christmas cards, attend all the Christmas parties, and buy enough gifts for every cousin and great-aunt in our families? But more than that, the spectacle of the long Christmas season is a testimony to the greatness and importance of the One for whom it is all about.

But this black cats and jack-o-lantern stuff in every store starting in August to me is making a statement. It's more than money hungry retailers trying to pull one over on naive shoppers, milking them for as much cash as possible as early as possible. Just let them try some month-long glitzy and attractive marketing blitz to promote Mother-in-Law Day and the consumers still aren't gonna bite. No, Halloween has taken up a huge place in the collective consciousness of post-modern America, and retailers are just capitalizing on a movement. It has become the new anti-religious holiday of choice for non-religious people. And it is being promoted, celebrated and planned for in a way that is disproportional to the actual value and meaning of the day.

Fall used to be about football, falling leaves, harvest, Thanksgiving, and an oh so very small part of the end of October. It was "oh, yeah, we need to sow Suzy a costume for Halloween coming up on Friday and stop by the store for a bag of candy in case some trick-or-treaters ring the bell." But it has morphed into the Holiday that Hijacked Fall in 3-D. It's goblins and witches and horror in your face for weeks on end. And it really is silly what we have allowed it to become.