Early Halloween markdowns a scary sight
By Beth Teitell
Tuesday, November 1, 2005

Hunters know it. So do sports fans, leaves and people who wear seersucker. Things have seasons, damn it.

So here’s a little hint to our nation’s retailers, who’ve co-opted Mother Nature’s job in setting the calendar: Mid-October is not Christmas. It’s Halloween.

Or it used to be, in the good old days, back when people peeled their own grape eyeballs.

But this year? Halloween ended last week. By the close of business Friday, the whole thing was over. That’s when the costume racks and ”seasonal” aisles at the pharmacies took on the depressing ”everything must go” look once reserved for the day after the holiday (and by the day after the holiday, I mean Nov. 1, not Oct. 28).

By yesterday - Halloween itself - the discounts were so steep I almost bought a hideous ceramic pumpkin and a felt bat in attack mode. And I probably would have, too, if I weren’t suffering from a deep case of Halloween fatigue - hours before I’d even taken my children trick-or-treating.

”You think that’s bad,” one of my friends countered, ”I’m already tired of wreaths.”

And she’s not alone. Last week, one of my colleagues arrived at work in a bad mood, having been sent into a funk by Christmas music. ”They were playing ’The Nutcracker’ on my way in,” he practically shouted.

Wreaths? ”The Nutcracker”? Now? To paraphrase Yogi Berra: It’s over before it started.

You know what’s going on, don’t you? It’s holiday base-stealing.

Between the holiday-themed banners and the limitless decorations, it’s become a holiday-eat-holiday world out there. So Santa moves in on Tom Turkey, who moves in on Spiderman, who moves in on Labor Day, who moves in on Back-to-School, who moves in on July 4, who moves in on Memorial Day, who moves in on the Easter Bunny, who moves in on Cupid, who moves in on Hanukkah Harry, and so on.

How much longer until the holidays are marketing themselves so far in the future that they lap themselves - so Christmas ’06 will be celebrated in ’05?

Before that happens, let’s encourage the senators to ask Bush’s latest Supreme Court nominee how he’d feel about setting a limit on the number of days a holiday can last, not unlike the seasons the states set for hunting moose or deer.

I know retailers would complain, but it would be for their own good. Overhunting leads to extinction, after all.

Well, in nature, at least. In our world, it may only increase business. On Saturday, as a heavy snow fell outside, I noticed print ads for designer trunk shows - for spring ’06.

On that note, let me be the first to wish you and yours a Happy Easter!