The trick-or-treat candy had barely settled in kids’ stomachs when the first signs of Christmas cheer began appearing.
The usual suspects started the long slog toward the holidays on Nov. 1 — namely, retailers, to whom the Christmas season isn’t just a celebration of peace and joy, but a substantial portion of the annual sales tally and the difference between a down year and a profitable one.
The annual Christmas push worked at noticeably different speeds, though. At the Smith’s supermarket in my neighborhood, Christmas gift wrap started pushing the Halloween candy off the shelves in the seasonal aisle in the last days of October. But at the Target I frequent, the Halloween costumes were still up a week into November, though at sharply reduced clearance prices — though by this week, red-and-green had supplanted orange-and-black as the dominant color scheme.
Downtown Salt Lake City’s dominant shopping complex, City Creek Center, was scheduled to kick off its Christmas season on Thursday night — a week before the traditional Black Friday event, when neighboring Temple Square turns on its million-plus Christmas lights. (Both locations are owned by different arms of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.) The City Creek launch includes the unveiling of Macy’s (formerly ZCMI) candy windows.
Not all retailers play along. REI has made a big deal in recent years of announcing that all of the outdoor-gear company’s stores will be closed on Black Friday, the traditional day-after-Thanksgiving launch of the monthlong Christmas buying frenzy.
Hollywood was quick on the trigger. On Nov. 1, less than a week after the last opening weekend for horror films, “A Bad Moms Christmas” landed in the nation’s theaters — a cynical holiday-themed raunch comedy with an equally cynical release plan. (It worked, though; the movie made nearly $42 million in its first two weeks, in a month dominated by Marvel’s “Thor: Ragnarok.”)
That was followed, on Nov. 10, with “Daddy’s Home 2,” the Will Ferrell/Mark Wahlberg comedy that equalled “A Bad Moms Christmas” for R-rated humor and a similar meet-the-parents plot. It also drew audiences, with an opening domestic weekend haul of $28.6 million.
And more are arriving in theaters in the next few days. Friday, Sony releases “The Star,” an animated version of the Nativity story, told from the standpoint of Mary’s donkey. And next Wednesday sees “The Man Who Invented Christmas,” which takes a peak inside the life and imagination of Charles Dickens (Dan Stevens) as he writes “A Christmas Carol.”
One place that’s been slow to get into the Christmas spirit, surprisingly, is the Salt Lake-area radio dial.
In recent years, it’s been common to hear one station or another switch over to Christmas music on Nov. 1 or soon after, looking to capitalize on the season.
“The stations that do Christmas music will see their ratings go up significantly during that period,” said Todd Nuke ‘Em, program director for alt-rock station KXRK-FM (X-96).
Sometimes it’s a stunt, good for a quick injection of ratings, Nuke ‘Em said. Other times, it’s an indicator that a station is changing its format, but delaying the permanent switch until the new year.
This season, though, stations are holding back. As of Wednesday evening, no Salt Lake City-area station had made the switch — not even the granddaddy of them all, KSFI-FM, better known as FM100.3.
FM100.3 is so famous in Utah for its Christmas selection, culminating in a 96-hour commercial-free holiday music marathon ending on Christmas night, that the station runs a contest in which listeners guess the exact moment the first carol will air.
When they do, the most-popular music station in Utah will draw even bigger ratings than usual. “FM100 just dominates the market when they switch,” Nuke ’Em observed.
It’s for the best, I think, that radio stations are holding back on the ratings-driven holiday merriment. If we are to keep Christmas in our hearts, maybe we need to keep it out of our ears a little longer.