Have you noticed that the Christmas season came early this year? It was sort of a voluntary thing amongst the giant cabal that is U.S.
Was this the result of intelligent marketing or hopeless desperation? To clue ourselves in on this answer let’s go back to last time that we faced an economy like the one we are in now. As many media and political types like to point out (and I happen to agree with several of them), that would be the great depression. For nearly a century Thanksgiving was held on the final Thursday in November. This could mean that either the fourth OR the fifth Thursday might be any given year’s annual day of thanks. Turns out in 1939, still in the throes of the great depression, Thanksgiving fell on such a fifth Thursday.
Now it seems laughable in 2011, but back then, it was poor taste to adorn a retail outlet with Christmas décor or have so-called “Christmas Sales” before Thanksgiving. So in 1939 Lew Hahn, the general manager of the Retail Dry Goods Association mentioned to the secretary of commerce that this date would be less than favorable for holiday sales at a time when retail outlets needed the revenue most. By October, FDR had come up with a solution: mandate Thanksgiving be held on the fourth Thursday in November.
It wasn’t until the 1950s that all states finally fell into line with what came to be knows as “Franksgiving.” And without getting into too many details about the national difficulties and the debate of this move, it finally stuck and is the date upon which we celebrate Thanksgiving today.
This little history lesson does have a point. In 1939, retailers needed to move Thanksgiving earlier to make way for Christmas, to give more time to spend more money. Today, with the nation and the world busier than ever, if we were to wait for congress to act we’d probably have to wait until 2045 and by then we’d get some crazy piece of legislation that moved Thanksgiving to mid- July so that the Christmas buying season could begin in earnest while we are still buying our sunscreen.
It’s not the simple fact that we do not need, nor would most likely tolerate an act of congress to move Thanksgiving, but rather we as consumers have already made up our minds when and how our buying will take place for the holiday season regardless of when Thanksgiving falls. Online retailers have shifted the entire focus of holiday buying from a specific set of dates and locations to one in which the consumer can more fully control the environment. However, in both 1939 and 2011, the economics are similar. The faster and longer people can get part time holiday work and the faster consumers can spend their hard- earned dollars, the better off the retailers and their wholesalers will be. Thus the business cycle can once again begin spinning a little faster.
Today, with the business cycle is fighting for its very life, there are stark differences between today’s retailer and the retailer of 1939. Businesses no longer have to wait for an act of congress. Thanksgiving, the federal holiday falls where it may within the specified law, but the sentiment for buying falls whenever the consumer decides. So the answer here is that it is both desperation and savvy marketing that we hear Bing Crosby in the linen aisle so early in the season.
Is this a bad thing or a good thing? Opinions vary widely and perhaps another post would be in order to properly assess the overall mood, but suffice it to say that while giving thanks for this holiday shopping season is not something that might be on the tip of every shoppers tongue, at least we can say we don’t have to wait for congress to begin the spending.
