Dwain Northey (Gen X)

Every year, as the leaves turn orange and the temperature dips, something unexplainable happens to the American psyche. October arrives and, sure, we dive headfirst into Halloween décor—giant spiders clinging to rooftops, inflatable ghosts flapping wildly in the breeze like pale, confused car dealership mascots, entire neighborhoods transformed into budget-friendly Tim Burton sets. This part is normal. Expected. Even charming in its own tacky, sugar-induced way.

But then—oh then—November 1st hits, and suddenly overnight, the country collectively develops amnesia. Pumpkins? Never heard of them. Skeletons? Who is she. Thanksgiving? Irrelevant. A minor speed bump on the high-speed interstate ramp straight into the North Pole.

Before we’ve even had a chance to come down from our fun-sized-candy hangovers, Christmas decorations explode across the landscape like tinsel-based shrapnel. Store aisles that were orange-and-black only yesterday have become red-and-green at a speed that suggests elves must have unionized with logistics teams from Amazon Prime.

Thanksgiving is still, hilariously, a full two weeks away—but you’d never know it. Turkeys are banished to a sad little endcap at the grocery store, wedged between peppermint bark and advent calendars that literally count down to a day no one is waiting for anymore because we’ve already been celebrating it for seven weeks.

At this point, the only thing surprising about the seasonal hijacking is that Spirit Halloween hasn’t yet thrown on a Santa hat and rebranded as Spirit Christmas, offering 365 days of seasonal whiplash. Why let a perfectly good abandoned Toys “R” Us sit empty for ten months when you could have Krampus animatronics and discount candy canes sharing shelf space with whatever leftover fog machines didn’t sell in October? If capitalism has taught us anything, it’s that the human desire for holiday décor is a year-round, deeply exploitable impulse.

We’ve reached a cultural moment where holiday seasons no longer follow the calendar—they overlap, stack, and collide like festive tectonic plates. It’s entirely possible that within a decade, we’ll see Fourth of July fireworks packaged alongside Halloween skeletons and Christmas tree ornaments. One-stop-shop seasonal dystopia.

But who can blame us? If life is chaotic, stressful, and occasionally soul-sucking, maybe the answer really is more twinkle lights, more inflatable snowmen, more holiday cheer squeezed into increasingly ridiculous timelines. Maybe the real lunacy isn’t that we start Christmas the day after Halloween—it’s that we pretend we won’t eventually start in September.

And honestly? At this rate, Groundhog Day is going to feel left out.