For non-celebrators of Christmas, one of the annoying things about the "Holiday season" is that it seems to constantly be getting longer with every passing year. Tim Harford wonders if this constant earlification of Christmas is economically efficient. Tyler Cowen thinks it's not: "Suppliers are inefficiently 'fishing' for early 'capture' of consumers as part of a common pool problem. If a given supplier doesn't grab that consumer's attention now, someone else will. Of course there can be no property rights in 'the attention of consumers,' so that attention is consumed inefficiently early."
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'Tis The Season
04 Dec 2006 08:36 am
Comments (18)
I see the Halloween aisle open up at the beginning of September. I also see the Christmas aisle start up near the beginning of November. If anyone is getting the short end of the stick it's Thanksgiving. We need more Thanksgiving lights!
Matt,
FYI, we celebrators think this is annoying, too.
It is highly inefficient in the case of back to school supplies. On Labor Day the local drugstore had swapped out the back to school section for Halloween. School hadn't even started yet.
Isn't it amazing that the guy literally cannot model problem in another other way than to posit a commons and discuss property rights? As though:
1. All seemingly unpleasant facts are tragedies of commons, and
2. The only solution to such problems is property rights.
As for the Christmas season, how about the idea that shopping is only secondarily related to it? Maybe we're just living such economically-determined, otherwise-meaningless lives that we crave any distraction, such as jingling bells.
Why not propose establishing property rights over consumer attention? It's no crazier than deep-sea fishery property rights in international waters*. Consumers could sell shares of their attention/shopping time to companies who could then develop them as consumers and resell those rights to other companies. Consumers that wish to become less materialistic could buy back their attention on the open market -- heck, you could even buy someone's attention, or give it to them as a Christmas gift.
* in fairness, I think this is quite crazy
What T. Porter said.
Time value of money! Retailers who pay rent (and all the other expenses) at the end of every month, including November, have a vested interest in Christmas starting well before November 30.
Thank your lucky stars you live in the USA where Thanksgiving
keeps this under control. In the UK they put up Xmas lights
and start the shopping in early October. On the other hand,
UK election campaigns are mercifully short - usually 6 weeks.
Going by my 47 years of memory, the Cristmas season has always been about this long. It offficially starts the day after thanksgiving with a few signs appearing after holloween. I think what we are seeing here is a memory of a memory (of a memeory in some cases) of when christmas started. We are probably channeling our grandpas (in my generation) or our great grandpas (in subsequent genrations). The guys over at Crooked Timber should look into this phenomenon.
There is a great scene in--I think--the Peanuts Easter television special, when the kids go to a dept. store and find banners announcing that there are only 186 days (or something like that) until Christmas.
Isn't it amazing that the guy literally cannot model problem in another other way than to posit a commons and discuss property rights? As though:
1. All seemingly unpleasant facts are tragedies of commons, and
2. The only solution to such problems is property rights.
The first 60 or so years of the 20th century was cooler than our day because the universal solvent du jour was Freud and sex.
Half baked theories that involve sex > half baked econominc theories.
cw is right on this. Christmas isn't coming earlier each year. The peanuts easter special was made in 1974.
When I was a kid (born 1963), the Christmas season started when the Sears "Wishbook" arrived. That was late September/early October. It worked out well. Shortly after the dreaded return to school, we could start looking ahead to Christmas. Halloween and Thanksgiving were just locallized spikes in the attention that only briefly obscured the impending Christmas magnificence.
One thing that really bugs me is the radio. It used to be that garbage Christmas pop only got played a few days before Christmas, then got overplayed on Christmas eve. Now it starts right after Thanksgiving. It really all stinks, except for the Kinks' "Father Christmas".
What do you mean by the season getting longer? Its started the day after thanksgiving for as long as I can remember. Didn't FDR try to move thanksgiving forward 2 weeks so that the shopping season could start sooner?
And it has exactly nothing to do with property rights, and everything to do with the fact that department store managers are pod people.
The lack of a "scope creep" like that of Christmas is one of the attractive features about the much more compact competing holiday, Festivus. But now it's threatened by posturing politicians impugning its good name. Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle played the "Festivus card" when, in aligning himself with critics of Michael Richards and his racist outburst, he singled out a revered holiday that actually predates the Seinfeld show by decades. Surely it will take more than a grandstanding governor to kill Festivus in this, its 40th anniversary year. Go ahead, Governor Doyle, air your grievance against Richards. Boycott Kramer/Richards, if you want. But please -- give Festivus a reprieve, or even a full pardon!
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Comments closed December 18, 2006.
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Heads in the Sand
Christmas is not alone in having such an elongated season. Advertisements and promotions for the other main "commercial" holidays, Halloween and Valentine's Day, begin over a month in advance, in fact many retailers begin Valentine's Day promotions as soon as Christmas is over.
On a somewhat similar note, many retailers hold "back to school" sales more than a month before classes resume.
Posted by Peter | December 4, 2006 9:32 AM