We’re three months away from the spookiest day of the year but some shops have already started selling Halloween decorations.
And despite Halloween being the second-best holiday after Christmas (f*ck you Easter and your stupid bunny) some people with too much time on their hands are annoyed at this, even though the shops are just trying to earn a profit and the sale of decorations having no bearing on their lives in the long run.
As it’s 2019 though, people are desperate to be upset at something so they’ve taken to the sewer of human opinion, Twitter, to make their complaints known to anyone who’ll listen.
Here’s a collection of people who literally just can’t even Halloween right now…
Thankfully not everyone is such a misery guts, in fact, most people are excited for the festival of Samhain and are already getting in the spooky spirit, fantasising about wearing sweaters, piles of orange leaves and salivating over sweets.
Here are the people who literally can even Halloween right now…
Don’t worry though dear reader, we here at UNILAD don’t want you to go away without learning a little something about the commercialisation of our favourite traditions and holidays.
So here’s the scoop on why shops start selling Christmas stuff in September, Easter Eggs in December and Halloween decorations in July.
It’s called Holiday Creep and it refers to a merchandising phenomenon in which shops introduce holiday-themed merchandise and decorations before the traditional start of the holiday shopping season.
The phenomenon was first called Christmas Creep, back in the early eighties, and specifically referred to shops in America selling Christmas tat before the end of Thanksgiving in the hopes of extending a period of time known as the ‘golden quarter’.
The golden quarter is the last quarter of the year (October to December) and is the time when shoppers tend to spend the most money and consequently shops make the most profit.
Retailers basically love this period of time and will do basically anything to extend it which led to them pushing their Christmas merchandise out earlier and earlier.
While the practice first started in America it slowly spread across the globe as retailers realised it was a good way to earn some extra cash.
Before long the practice evolved beyond Christmas and soon every holiday was having its merchandise sold months before their traditional shopping season.
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More of a concept than a journalist, Tom Percival was forged in the bowels of Salford University from which he emerged grasping a Masters in journalism.
Since then his rise has been described by himself as ‘meteoric’ rising to the esteemed rank of Social Editor at UNILAD as well as working at the BBC, Manchester Evening News, and ITV.
He credits his success to three core techniques, name repetition, personality mirroring, and never breaking off a handshake.