Yay for Nordstrom's.
One Holiday At a Time is a pretty good motto in this situation, as far as I'm concerned. I'd never heard it before, but apparently there's a name for this thing that's been going on so noticeably this year, where it's not even Thanksgiving and all the merchants are acting like Christmas is next week - it's called "Christmas creep". I don't like it. But you know, the thing is that I don't actually have a problem with a certain amount of marketing aimed at Christmas coming out before Halloween, even - as long as it's subtle. I know Wal-Mart et al. have trouble with subtlety, but heck, catalog retailers have been doing it for years. You just don't specifically say anything about Christmas, is how most of them handle it. After Halloween, you can mention Christmas, maybe, and you can set up the Christmas department, even - but you do not put up Christmas decorations anywhere outside the Christmas department, or worse, play Christmas carols. You can sort of gradually segue your fall theme into a wintery theme, as the month of November goes along, but that's about all I'll allow, when I am Queen of the Universe. As a matter of fact, I will allow the decorations to go up after Thanksgiving, but I definitely think Christmas music should be forbidden until at least December 1st, no matter what, and really I'd prefer it was a bit later. The playlist of popular holiday music is pretty small - there's lots of Christmas albums, god knows, but most of them have the same dozen songs on them, after all. So to me - and I think to a lot of people - after a couple of weeks, holiday music tends to get really, really stale. (And I know there are a good many people who'd rather not hear it at all. But let's give that one up as a lost cause, ok?)
(I have talked about topics like holiday music before, but I don't know if those entries still exist, since at least some of them were back in my Diary-X days. So I may be repeating myself, and I apologize if you've read me carrying on about some of this before!)
Oh, speaking of creep, I heard a Gander Mountain commercial on the radio this morning that said they would be open from 3pm to 9pm on Thanksgiving Day - so, they said, you'll have something to do after you finish up the turkey. I am indecisive about this. For one thing, I've worked in places that were open Thanksgiving Day and it sucks to be the one working. But on the other hand, I have also experienced the boredom of late Thanksgiving afternoons. I'm not really a big napper, and so in my family, I was often the only one awake at some point or other in the afternoon. (My grandmother was partial to recliners and always had at least two of them in the living room, and often more. Late in her life, I think there were six of them. Walking in and seeing practically the whole family snoozing away in recliners was hilarious.) Anyway, bored or not, Gander Mountain is not a place that's going to appeal to me. But is this another trend that's spreading?
Also, back to the Nordstrom's business, that's all well and good, too, but does that mean they're going to have half their employees working overtime on Thanksgiving Day doing the decorating? I was thinking about the whole employee issue even before![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
p_j_cleary posted about Kohl's opening at 4am - if you are an executive at a retail company, and you decide your employees need to work Thanksgiving Day or at 4am on Friday or whatever, you better fucking be right out there opening the door with them at 3:59. That's my view of it. And anyway, are there people crazy enough to go shopping at 4am? There probably are.
(Also, since I wrote the paragraph above, I have been told that the outlet mall on the other side of Houston is opening at midnight. Worse and worse.)
I'm very interested in the whole issue of marketing for Christmas, if you haven't noticed. The Consumerist has a whole category for Christmas Creep; it seems to be a special interest of theirs. Also, the Wall St Journal has a separate blog for Holiday Sales stuff. (I'm pretty sure their blogs aren't subscription only. Which reminds me, I saw somewhere that Murdoch wants to make access to the WSJ Online free. I paid some relatively paltry amount for a year of access - $20 or so, I think - but I have a co-worker who paid $99 for it, which I believe is the supposedly going rate!)
One Holiday At a Time is a pretty good motto in this situation, as far as I'm concerned. I'd never heard it before, but apparently there's a name for this thing that's been going on so noticeably this year, where it's not even Thanksgiving and all the merchants are acting like Christmas is next week - it's called "Christmas creep". I don't like it. But you know, the thing is that I don't actually have a problem with a certain amount of marketing aimed at Christmas coming out before Halloween, even - as long as it's subtle. I know Wal-Mart et al. have trouble with subtlety, but heck, catalog retailers have been doing it for years. You just don't specifically say anything about Christmas, is how most of them handle it. After Halloween, you can mention Christmas, maybe, and you can set up the Christmas department, even - but you do not put up Christmas decorations anywhere outside the Christmas department, or worse, play Christmas carols. You can sort of gradually segue your fall theme into a wintery theme, as the month of November goes along, but that's about all I'll allow, when I am Queen of the Universe. As a matter of fact, I will allow the decorations to go up after Thanksgiving, but I definitely think Christmas music should be forbidden until at least December 1st, no matter what, and really I'd prefer it was a bit later. The playlist of popular holiday music is pretty small - there's lots of Christmas albums, god knows, but most of them have the same dozen songs on them, after all. So to me - and I think to a lot of people - after a couple of weeks, holiday music tends to get really, really stale. (And I know there are a good many people who'd rather not hear it at all. But let's give that one up as a lost cause, ok?)
(I have talked about topics like holiday music before, but I don't know if those entries still exist, since at least some of them were back in my Diary-X days. So I may be repeating myself, and I apologize if you've read me carrying on about some of this before!)
Oh, speaking of creep, I heard a Gander Mountain commercial on the radio this morning that said they would be open from 3pm to 9pm on Thanksgiving Day - so, they said, you'll have something to do after you finish up the turkey. I am indecisive about this. For one thing, I've worked in places that were open Thanksgiving Day and it sucks to be the one working. But on the other hand, I have also experienced the boredom of late Thanksgiving afternoons. I'm not really a big napper, and so in my family, I was often the only one awake at some point or other in the afternoon. (My grandmother was partial to recliners and always had at least two of them in the living room, and often more. Late in her life, I think there were six of them. Walking in and seeing practically the whole family snoozing away in recliners was hilarious.) Anyway, bored or not, Gander Mountain is not a place that's going to appeal to me. But is this another trend that's spreading?
Also, back to the Nordstrom's business, that's all well and good, too, but does that mean they're going to have half their employees working overtime on Thanksgiving Day doing the decorating? I was thinking about the whole employee issue even before
p_j_cleary posted about Kohl's opening at 4am - if you are an executive at a retail company, and you decide your employees need to work Thanksgiving Day or at 4am on Friday or whatever, you better fucking be right out there opening the door with them at 3:59. That's my view of it. And anyway, are there people crazy enough to go shopping at 4am? There probably are.(Also, since I wrote the paragraph above, I have been told that the outlet mall on the other side of Houston is opening at midnight. Worse and worse.)
I'm very interested in the whole issue of marketing for Christmas, if you haven't noticed. The Consumerist has a whole category for Christmas Creep; it seems to be a special interest of theirs. Also, the Wall St Journal has a separate blog for Holiday Sales stuff. (I'm pretty sure their blogs aren't subscription only. Which reminds me, I saw somewhere that Murdoch wants to make access to the WSJ Online free. I paid some relatively paltry amount for a year of access - $20 or so, I think - but I have a co-worker who paid $99 for it, which I believe is the supposedly going rate!)
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