Halloween in June is a bad idea

But it's a trend!

Why not toss in Flag Day and Christmas too

The satellite radio station to which I used to subscribe had an old-time radio channel, and every summer they do a week-long programming block called “Christmas in July.” I hated it. I don’t want to hear hoary old japes about Santy Claus when it’s high hot summer. I am equally opposed to this:

Halloween fans who can’t wait til October are celebrating Summerween. They’re decorating their homes and throwing parties—costumes optional, beach vibes welcome.

“People do Christmas in July so why not do Halloween in June?” said Danielle Maas.

Because it’s June. I think you could call this a Maas Delusion.

To use the archaic internet speech - you know, circa 2021 - is this a thing? It’s not really a thing. It’s Festivus for theater kids. The article has some pictures of people in cadaverous costumes, ugly and deformed and decayed, as if this goes right along with June’s rule of riotous life. Halloween works in fall because everything is entering the state of decay and decline. The trees scratch the scudding clouds with their ruined boughs, and all that. The chill in the air foretells the cold tomb of winter, the grinning gourds are a reminder of the harvest now gathered and the fallow bare fields, etc etc. I’ve no use for it, much, but I can’t muster a jot of care for those who love it. Enjoy yourself! Just don’t drag its bloody corpse into the heart of summer.

What worries me are the companies that are encouraging this idea.

Retailers have taken notice. Some started stocking Halloween merchandise as early as April.

Because you want to make sure you get your Summerween shopping in before Easter

TJ Maxx offers decor specifically for Summerween: an ornament of Frankenstein in a beach chair, a candle with a ghost in a pool. Walmart’s front-of-store “Summer Frights” section includes blankets emblazoned with skeletons in bikinis.

The problem is that Halloween merchandise already shows up too early. Everything does. The minute the Fourth of July is over, Target dumps the summer merch in the seasonal aisle for Back to School, an act of stupendous cruelty. Children with two big months of summer left face a giant pencil hanging from the ceiling like the blade of a guillotine. Bins of erasers. Shelves of folders and book bags. The first week of September they are replaced by life-sized animatronic ghouls draped with rotten garments, motion-activated to utter baleful shrieks when you walk past. Two solid months of shrieking corpses. If you add the April - June selling season for Summerween, that adds up to five months of Halloween, almost half a year of bones and blood. Surely even fans of the holiday will tire of the overkill. Surely one of them will hear “Monster Mash” in a store on March 30th and think “oh, it’s too soon, I won’t be in the mood for weeks.”

Yes, I know, let people have fun. There are more important things to feign annoyance about. But. If it does become popular, then I reserve the right to institute a full-scale patriotic exercise called The Fourth of January, where we make snowmen with red dye to look like British troops, then blow them up with fireworks. No, even better: Arbor Day in December, where we plant trees that die within the month because they asphyxiate in the hard frozen soil. Or - hear me out - Christmas in December, except it’s the next Christmas.

Or, we can just make the entire year Halloween. Springoween and Winterween. Springoween would have pastel bunny Frankensteins with electrodes through their skulls, or ghoul-chicks with an eyeball hanging out. I’m sure it would be popular.

“‘Easter is so cheerful and boring,’ said Easterween fan Ranielle Lees. ‘It’s always been about coming back to life, so maybe it’s time to celebrating getting dead and staying there?’ Stores have responded to consumer demand, with Easterween merchandise now appearing in TJ Maxx in January, sitting alongside clearance merchandise for St. Patricksween, which had been stocked since November.”

Yes, I am being a scold. No, it’s not hurting anyone. Sure, they can do what they like. Let’s just not pretend it’s a real holiday. And stop making Frankenstein’s Monster into a cuddly fellow who has fruity drinks at the beach! He would smell horrible and would clomp around in the sand shouting NRRRRR and it would all end with everyone using flaming torches made from beach umbrellas to drive him to the end of a pier and push him off. That’s how it always goes. Don’t get me started with the idea of Dracula tanning by the pool. He’d need a sunscreen with the SPF of roofing tar.