Why Stores Put Christmas Decorations Out So Early
Holiday aisles went up before Halloween again this year. The habit is older than anyone shopping today, and the shoppers it chases haven't changed as much as the shelves.
In 1939, a president moved Thanksgiving to sell more Christmas presents.
Worried that a short holiday shopping season might drag on the economic recovery, Franklin D. Roosevelt issued a proclamation shifting the holiday a week earlier, to the second-to-last Thursday of November. The country did not take it quietly. According to the National Archives, 32 states went along, 16 refused, and "for two years two days were celebrated as Thanksgiving." Congress finally fixed the date as the fourth Thursday, and Roosevelt signed the measure on Dec. 26, 1941.
So when the inflatable reindeer show up at the home-improvement store before the Halloween candy has sold out, it helps to know the impulse is older than anyone shopping today. What has changed is how early the shelf flips, and why.
Christmas creep, 2026 edition
The term "Christmas creep" dates to the mid-1980s, though retailers were pushing early holiday shopping in the 19th century. This year's version arrived on schedule, which is to say early. As of mid-September, Home Depot had begun putting out its holiday collection the month before, Best Buy had launched a holiday preview it billed as "earlier than ever," and Michaels, Hobby Lobby, Dollar General, Costco and Walmart were all stocking holiday goods, NBC reported on Sept. 18. The Postal Service opened its Operation Santa program on Sept. 14, with 100 days still to go before Christmas.
Why do stores put Christmas stuff out so early?
The cynical answer, that retailers simply want a longer season to sell into, is part of it. It isn't the most interesting part.
The calendar has a hole in it. The stretch after Labor Day is quiet for stores, with back-to-school done and the holidays far off. Retail expert Trae Bodge put the logic simply in the NBC report:
"It's kind of slow, and so for retailers to have buzzy decor in the windows and sales and excitement, it kind of makes sense. They want to drum up that excitement, get people back into the stores."
Trae Bodge, retail expert, speaking to NBC
Merchandising runs on last year's receipts. Retailers base product placement on past purchase trends, and big chains lock their holiday plans in at least a year ahead, Kristy Grayson, a marketing professor in Utah, told ABC4. If early decorations sold last September, they go out again this September, and a little sooner.
Shoppers are spreading out their spending. This is the part the store-blaming version misses. In a PayPal survey of 2,005 U.S. adults conducted by Morning Consult on Sept. 2 to 4, 58% said they feel greater financial concern heading into the holidays, while 64% still expect to spend the same or more than last year. People who plan to spend as much with less breathing room tend to start sooner and pay in pieces: 55% of those surveyed have used or considered buy now, pay later, a habit that is starting to show up on credit scores.
"What's changing isn't consumers' desire to spend during the holidays, but how they're going about it."
Frank Keller, PayPal
How many people actually start holiday shopping before November?
About four in 10, by two separate counts this year. PayPal's survey found 40% plan to begin by the end of October and 58% before Thanksgiving, with 29% planning to start earlier than last year. An Adtaxi survey of 1,029 adults conducted Aug. 25 landed almost exactly in the same place: 39.8% planning to start by the end of October and 65.7% before Thanksgiving.
Those numbers come from different surveys with different questions, so they shouldn't be stacked as a precise trend line. But the rough consistency is telling. For two decades, a large minority of Americans has wanted to shop early. What the stores have done is chase that group further up the calendar, and make sure the rest of us can't avoid seeing it.
Is Christmas creep making the season worse?
People have complained about it for as long as it has existed. A letter writer in 1947 grumbled that early decorations left people "so sick and tired of the lights and trimmings" by December, as the history collected on the Christmas creep entry shows. The early 20th century even had an organized counter-campaign: Florence Kelley's National Consumers League launched a "Shop Early" push in 1906, aimed at easing harsh December working conditions in stores. Shopping early was once a reform cause as much as a sales tactic.
The creep is not uniquely American, either. It now shows up in the U.K., Canada, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand, and the Irish department store Brown Thomas has opened its Christmas shop as early as August.
For shoppers, the useful move is to treat the early shelf as information rather than pressure. Bodge's advice in the same report was practical: "I think it's a really good time to create a holiday shopping fund." Seasonal marketing has been compressing for years, the same force that now has pumpkin spice landing in August. Roosevelt had to move a national holiday to buy retailers an extra week. Today's stores just rearrange an aisle, and the calendar quietly follows.
