Christmas Day should be the beginning rather than the end of the festive celebrations. But commercial logic points in a different direction
I’m one of those old-fashioned types who reckons the Christmas season should begin late. I like to put the Christmas decorations up the Sunday before Christmas at the very latest, and I even enjoy working on the morning of Christmas Eve – there’s something more magically Dickensian about taking just that afternoon off and heading home with beribboned parcel, rather than taking up residence on the sofa a week beforehand. Christmas Day should be the beginning rather than the end of the festive celebrations.
Commercial logic points in a different direction. There is little profit for Selfridges or Dixons or Hamleys trying to get people in a Christmassy mood at the very last minute. Indeed, the economist Emek Basker has found that in the US, where the Christmas shopping season varies between 26 and 32 days depending on the date of Thanksgiving, longer seasons mean more overall spending (about $8 per person per extra day). Daily spending rises in November after Thanksgiving, but is just as high in December even during the most protracted shopping seasons.
The economist Joel Waldfogel, author of Scroogenomics, estimates that the extra spending on Christmas and Hanukkah in the US in 2007 was $66bn – a substantial sum, and relative to the size of the economy it is even larger in the UK.
No wonder that at this time of year, everyone hurries to publish articles about how the Christmas spending rush is good for retailers. But this is odd. Imagine how much easier life would be for retailers if that extra $66bn was spread evenly across the year.
For a hint at the inconvenience, I spoke to Derek Hayes, of Oxfordshire-based Skyline Promotions. Hayes runs the ultimate seasonal business: a British company producing firework displays. This year was particularly challenging because Bonfire Night fell at the weekend. (Wednesdays are easiest, because they spread the workload across two weekends and midweek.)
Skyline employed 42 people to run 16 firework displays on Saturday, November 5. Because most of Hayes’ staff have unrelated day jobs, the 14 displays on Friday the 4th were even more challenging. But contrast that peak of 42 workers with much of the rest of the year, when Hayes works alone. To cope this year, he called in favours from old associates who travelled from Cornwall and Leeds. He even organised a post-fireworks reunion party.
Firework displays are, of course, particularly challenging: they are extraordinarily seasonal, cannot be stored, and require skilled staff. But other businesses must cope with versions of the same challenge.
Does this matter? The economist Jeffrey Miron pointed out in The Economics of Seasonal Cycles, published more than two decades ago, that a perfectly efficient market will cope just fine: prices, wages and rents will rise at peak times to cover the very real costs of seasonal booms. Customers will either willingly pay extra, because they value the convenience of the timing, or will instead buy Christmas presents in the January sales, order cocktails during happy hour, and organise weddings on Wednesdays in October.
In practice, Miron argued, things are not quite so simple. For various reasons – some cultural, some legal – there are limits to how flexible prices and wages tend to be, and how responsive people can be in return. Some office Christmas parties are successfully moved to January, but few family Christmases are. And most schools will not applaud parents who seek a cheaper holiday by pulling their children out of class. As a result, shops will remain congested and staff harassed during Christmas, and managing inventory will be a logistical nightmare.
My Christmas decorations may be going up late in the season, but I did most of my Christmas shopping early. It was the least I could do.
Also published at ft.com.