Home > Halloween > Articles > Mating Seasons

Mating Seasons
by Shellie Bishoff Gardner, Las Vegas, Nevada

For many people this time of year is their favorite. The cooler weather prompts more neighbors to venture out of their air-conditioned homes and socialize. Tied to a past involving evolution we cannot help but feel the urgings of harvest even if harvesting means stocking up in the vegetable isle of the local grocery store. Shorter days mean that darkness sneaks in on us earlier and with it an excitement for Halloween. Never to miss an opportunity local stores have begun filling shelves with Harvest and Halloween inventory. One can not help but notice that merchants hoping to spark the beginnings of fevered Holiday spending have already devoted small portions of shelving to Christmas items. Just a few items at first but inevitably there begins the Pre-Season phenomena of reproduction. These few Christmas items awaken and with time honored tradition begin to seek mates and reproduce. There will be a short span of consumer confusion as these offspring migrate to other store shelves. Consuming the Fall decor in order to meet their ravenous need for energy as they too mate and reproduce. Thanksgiving Holiday items don't stand a chance. Even as people begin to adopt these items from the filling shelves over the next couple of months the pattern will continue and escalate to a feverish pitch until these populations of Christmas items have reached a level in which they will have swallowed up entire areas previously allocated to Fall inventory. Spilling out into other arenas like fabrics and automotive. Not even toilet supplies can be cordoned off and spared from infestation. By Christmas the mating season will have ended as abruptly as it began. Even before the last few Christmas items are inspected over and taken for purchase merchants will begin to restock shelves with just a few of the next seasonal items. Inventory made up of cardboard hearts filled with chocolates. These too will awaken and emerge with only one thing on their minds.

10/06/04