Runny Holidays
You can divide the population of America cleanly into two different groups based only on one factor. Americans that run marathons on Thanksgiving, and Americans who don’t.
Today’s article is about different holidays in America running on longer than just the day itself and how that relates to the amusement park industry. A cynic might say that this happens for, or is even perpetrated by, varying businesses only looking to make money. An idealist might say that everyone simply wants more time and opportunity to experience the joy of each holiday as it comes. A realist would point out that holiday celebrations take much preparation that will naturally lend itself to holiday run.
The official US Federal holidays are New Year’s Day, MLK Day, President’s Day, Memorial Day, Juneteenth, 4th of July, Labor Day, Indigenous People’s Day, Veteran’s Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. Easter and Halloween are culturally and financially significant holidays as well in American culture, but are not officially recognized by the government itself.
On this topic and of holidays in general, of course the biggest is Christmas. I can summarize runny Christmas in 5 often repeated words; Christmas is out before Halloween. This is a more common occurrence in retail and general society. In the amusement park space however Halloween serves as a steadfast dam that typically keeps Christmas from surfacing any sooner than November. Typically, in the theme park space, Christmas tends to run over it’s date compared to other holidays, but this is also a natural reflection of Christmas itself and my motivation to write on this subject in the first place. You see, the 12 days of Christmas is a real time, officially established by the Council of Tours in 657 AD and spans from Christmas Day, 12 / 25, up until the eve of Epiphany, 1 / 5, Epiphany itself on 1 / 6 being the day of celebrating the three wise men visiting Jesus. But if you look back to modern American society, with both Christmas and New Year’s Day being official federal holidays so close to each other, it has become common for schools and some businesses to take the entire week off. A lot of those people will want to go somewhere different and fun with their time off, which is where amusement parks come in.
Within the context of Amusement Parks, runny Halloween is just as, if not more prevalent than runny Christmas. Halloween does not have it’s own preceding holiday that would significantly limit how early parks could start their own Halloween activities. At my home parks of Kings Dominion and Busch Gardens Williamsburg, Halloween activities started on
September 19th and September 10th. Mickey’s Not-So-Scary-Halloween-Party at the Magic Kingdom in Florida started on August 15th. That would be like starting Christmas celebrations on October 10th . However Halloween usually stops being celebrated by Halloween, or even earlier than Halloween depending on the day of the week it falls on. A lot of regional parks are only open on weekends during the time of year Halloween falls upon, so if Halloween falls between Monday and Wednesday, a lot of parks would not even celebrate Halloween on Halloween. Halloween might run a few days after 10 / 31 itself if it falls on a Thursday, Friday, or Saturday, as it did this past year, but just like Halloween stops Christmas from starting early, Christmas keeps Halloween from running late. The first two weeks of November are typically a big crunch in the amusement park industry to have Halloween decorations taken down and Christmas decorations put up as quickly as possible. These are usually significant park wide transformations.
Some people (a lot of people? A good amount of people, at least a noticeable amount of people) react very negatively to Runny Christmas, but there’s no similar negativity towards Runny Halloween. I think this could be in part due to the Blue Christmas Phenomenon. This is a tendency for some to become sad at Christmas, which at it’s core stems from a dissonance between an ideal Christmas celebration and the real Christmas celebration. It could also be related to strong personal associations individuals have towards Christmas. This is most commonly, but not exclusively, related to strained family relationships, financial pressure, and societal pressure to be happy.
I have not heard of any similar phenomenon towards Halloween. Halloween does not have the same pressure to be happy and celebrate it cheerfully as Christmas does. Halloween celebrations themselves are not as strongly identified and narrowly defined as Christmas traditions are either. Fun and horror are central elements of Halloween, but they manifest themselves into a much wider variety of traditions and celebrations than is the case with Christmas. It’s much more socially acceptable to not like Halloween that it is to not like Christmas. I find it interesting that a lack of pressure to enjoy Halloween leads to a more enjoyable Halloween but that would make perfect sense as well.
Other holiday celebrations at amusement parks, I’m sure they happen but are not nearly as drawn out or widely held. I would assume the 4th of July would probably be the next most runny holiday, but even then, not nearly to the point of Halloween and Christmas. 4th of July celebrations sometimes blend into just regular summer time operations at parks. It’s common for parks to have fireworks in the summer, and it’s common everywhere to have fireworks on the 4th of July. A park might have 4th of July fireworks from the 3rd to the 5th, but otherwise would have just regular fireworks, which may or may not be significantly different than the fireworks they were going to have anyways.
Let me know if I missed anything, or if you have anything to add on the subject, with an email to bumpersky@gmail.com.
Anyways, this has been a really long way to say it’s ok if your Christmas Decorations are still up past New Years.
