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By Kate Hogan

During a recent trip to Walgreens, I experienced what can only be described as a seasonal identity crisis: a joint Christmas-Halloween aisle. One side was lined with plastic skeletons, fun-sized candy bars, light-up jack-o’-lanterns, and fake cobwebs. The other featured Santa Claus, rosy-cheeked and jolly as ever, in the middle of October.

Halloween and Christmas decorations in the seasonal aisle at Walgreens. Photo credit: Kate Hogan.

This phenomenon has a name: “Christmas Creep,” referring to the gradual, some might say aggressive, expansion of the holiday season. Christmas marketing, music, and merchandise (including two-foot-tall Santas) appear earlier and earlier each year. A holiday season that once began the day after Thanksgiving now seems to begin before we even buy our Halloween costumes. 

Natasha Lubik (‘26) shared this frustration in a response to a survey from The Match: “Setting out Christmas decorations in stores beginning in September is too much. Halloween hasn’t even happened yet! I understand after Thanksgiving, but it is almost like, as a community, we only care about Christmas, and not any other historical holidays.”

To gauge how the Collegiate community feels about the early arrival of Christmas, The Match conducted a short survey, sent to all Upper School students and faculty. In total, 87 people responded. The survey asked two main questions: “If you and your family celebrate and decorate for Christmas, when do you start?” and “How do you feel about this statement: ‘As a culture, we start celebrating and decorating for Christmas too early in the U.S.’”

Nearly half of the respondents (48%) said their families began decorating after Thanksgiving, while 36.8% wait until December. Opinions on whether Americans start celebrating Christmas too early were almost evenly split, with 47.1% agreeing and 43.7% disagreeing. 

At my retail job as a sales associate at the clothing store Chico’s, “PHS” (pre-holiday season) has already begun. Shipments of sparkly sequined New Year’s Eve jackets, red pants, and snowflake-buttoned sweaters arrived in late September, weeks before the first leaf even fell in Richmond. 

And it’s not just my store. Nationwide, retailers are receiving holiday stock earlier and earlier each year to meet shifting consumer habits. A report from The Food Institute found that holiday-related searches now begin in mid-August, with some purchases happening as early as July.

It’s no wonder our shelves are filling up with Christmas items before Halloween candy even goes on sale. According to a Northwestern Medill study, over half of adults now begin holiday shopping in October or earlier, and a Gartner survey found that nearly one-third of shoppers plan to buy gifts by October. Christmas isn’t just coming earlier. It is already here, months in advance, neatly shrink-wrapped in a shipping box labeled “ho-ho-ho” by my manager. 

This isn’t the first time The Match has covered this topic. In 2023, a Match opinion piece by Braden Bell (’24) entitled “When Should Christmas Be in Town?” raised similar concerns about the holiday season starting too early. 

Thanksgiving, my personal favorite holiday, has become the overlooked middle child of the holidays. It’s supposed to be a pause for gratitude, a moment to gather and reflect before the rush. But when stores rush to replace orange and black with red and green, and radios go from “Thriller” to “All I Want for Christmas is You,” we skip the chance to enjoy it. 

Upper School Spanish teacher Monique Voss shared a similar sentiment in the survey. “Christmas decorations in August and September take a little bit of the specialness of the season away,” she said. She prefers to “wait until after Thanksgiving” to put up her decorations.

Sure, there’s comfort in the early arrival of Christmas cheer. The world can always use more light, caroling, and peppermint mochas. But when the holiday starts before the leaves have even finished falling, it risks losing the very thing that makes it magical: anticipation. The sparkle of the season dulls when it stretches too far. Addison Lucas (‘26) agrees: “Sometimes when we get into the holiday spirit too early, it takes away the magic of the season in the weeks actually leading up to Christmas because it’s less special.”

However, AnneClare Fonville (‘26) offered a fair point: Christmas cheer isn’t all bad. It’s often correlated with the Christmas community service we know and love. “No one can take away from the spirit of Christmas,” she said, adding, “the Christmas season often promotes charity, so preparing early may increase someone’s likelihood to volunteer.” 

And she’s right, at least partially. Many non-profits actually rely on this early festive spirit. Nearly half of charitable organizations receive over 25% of their annual donations between October and December, and many launch their year-end campaigns as early as October to catch people in a giving mood. 

The so-called “holiday volunteer season” also drives a surge in community service. One study found that 16% of adults volunteer about two hours a month during this stretch, 5% more than the rest of the year. 

Maybe “Christmas Creep” isn’t just about consumerism after all. Maybe it’s proof that even when stores cash in on the season, people still find a way to make it about giving. 

Macy Boyer (‘26) falls somewhere in between. “I personally start celebrating Christmas on Nov. 1 to give Halloween the respect it deserves,” she said. “However, I do believe that Thanksgiving is just a dress rehearsal for Christmas dinner, so I start celebrating as soon as trick or treating is over.” 

Perhaps the problem isn’t Christmas itself, but our inability to wait for it. The best parts of the holiday have always been about slowing down, enjoying time with loved ones, and reconnecting with what actually matters. So let’s give Halloween the moment it deserves, let Thanksgiving breathe, and save the sleigh bells, at least for Black Friday. Because if we rush Christmas too much, we’ll forget why we look forward to it and, more importantly, why we celebrate it in the first place.