Target Pledges to Ease Up on "Christmas Creep" After Countless Complaints & Comments on Social Media

Will Target End the Christmas Creep for Good?
Photo by: Photo by Mattys Flicks, via Flickr. (CC BY 2.0)

For years, shoppers in retail stores across the nation have been experiencing a phenomena that's been dubbed "The Christmas Creep". You may not be familiar with the term, but you definitely know what The Creep is. It's when you're visiting your local retailer, looking to score some spooky decor, sweet treats, cool costumes, and other Halloween supplies, and when you finally make your way to the seasonal section of the store, half of the Halloween Section is already gone, being replaced with Christmas cheer, and what's left of the once-festive Halloween Section is decidedly fractured and picked over. "But it's still the middle of October," you think to yourself. "How is this possible when there's still two week until Halloween?"

That frustration right there, where Christmas is pushed on consumers seemingly earlier and earlier each year, that, is The Christmas Creep.

This isn't a new phenomena, The Christmas Creep is something that has frustrated and bewildered shoppers for decades. While some folks don't mind seeing the Christmas Cheer while they buy their trick or treat candy, it can be frustrating to see your favorite holiday seemingly come and go in a flash from retail stores, when it feels like Christmas has taken over stores as early as mid-September, and stays strong into the throes of January. With Halloween, while you may see candy begin to hit the shelves around the Back to School Buzz in August, and generic "Fall" decor roll out at the same time, full on spooky and scary Halloween decor, costumes, supplies, and merchandise is rolled out in September, and while it stays on shelves through the holiday, anyone who has ever gone to a big box store in the two weeks leading up to Halloween can tell you that aside from the obscene amounts of candy on the shelves, the Halloween merchandise is slim pickings by the middle of October.

Now in the digital age, the complaints of the Christmas creep have left the funny pages in the newspaper, and in a world where everyone has their own personal soap box via social media, retailers have been mocked, ridiculed, and generally complained at by the masses about the Christmas Creep - in short, folks are tired of being rushed to celebrate the next big thing or holiday before they've had a chance to even enjoy the current one.

It seems like all of that frustration might be coming to a head, because retail giant Target announced that it was going to take on the Christmas Creep, and make their in-store Christmas marketing less aggressive before Thanksgiving. In a statement given to the Associated Press, Target's Chief Marketing Officer, Rick Gomez, stated "They want us to pause, and be really intentional and recognize Thanksgiving. What they don't want us to do is go right into Christmas. So, we are going to respect that," in regards to the customers who are fed up with feeling like all of their Fall & Winter holidays are being rolled together into one Frankenholiday.

What does this mean for the Christmas Creep of 2017 at Target? Not much, practically speaking - the retailer will be holding off on the large Christmas displays at entryways until after Thanksgiving, but it will still have a variety of Christmas baubles available in the Seasonal Section of the store before Thanksgiving Day. While the change may be small, we've got hope for next year - maybe we won't feel so rushed through Halloween and Thanksgiving - we'll just have to wait and see.