Christmas in September Leaves Shoppers Cold

Look around your local department store, and you might encounter a ridiculous site: a Christmas display. Yes, retailers are already decking their halls, desperate to get a piece of consumers’ dwindling holiday budgets before their competitors do. Consumers aren't buying it. “You can’t get in the Christmas spirit in September man,” one shopper tells the Boston Globe. “Crazy, all this stuff so early.”

But retailers say it’s crazy like a fox (or maybe a reindeer). “If retailers weren’t successful with this strategy, those shelves, which are valuable real estate, would be shelving other things,” said a rep for a retail trade group. The group’s estimates that 40% of the country starts shopping before Halloween. “If you’re not doing this, you are just handing over market share.” (More retail stories.)