With Labor Day coming around the corner, summer is officially coming to a close. Now’s a great time to run out to the store and pick up Halloween decorations!

If you’ve been to some stores in recently you’ve likely seen frightful merchandise out for sale more than two months ahead of Oct. 31.

It goes without saying that Christmas paraphernalia shows up well before that momentous and glorious holiday, but Halloween?

No, we don’t want to buy a Christmas tree — even a fake one — two months in advance. But we do want to shop early to make sure we complete our lists well ahead of the handover of gifts. And you could argue that having the holiday on your mind facilitates that.

But why would we want to start thinking about Halloween in August? Or even September, for that matter?

According to the news app Morning Brew, retailers have been pushing earlier and earlier Halloween sales to bring in more cash. Morning Brew said Michael’s began presenting Halloween products on store shelves in June this year.

And, according to Morning Brew, “This is the second year Home Depot hosted its ‘Halfway to Halloween’ event during which the retailer sold limited quantities of Halloween items on April 25 (though it won’t stock the collections in-store until the first week of September).”

And Lowe’s and Target also introduced Halloween items online earlier than ever.

Let’s be honest about it: Stores do whatever they want and need to do to influence customers and boost sales. If they think Halloween products will sell well before the humidity becomes tolerable in late summer, why should anybody complain?

And we certainly want our local retailers to flourish. Stores going out of business does no one any good in any community.

But how did we customers suddenly (or even gradually) become enthusiastic about buying holiday goods months before the holidays?

Are we headed for a time when Christmas will collide with Easter? When Memorial Day will overrun the 4th of July?

While we can sympathize with merchants who want to get Christmas off to an early start, and maybe even hope they succeed, premature offerings of witches, goblins and their surroundings are not necessarily welcome sights in our stores.

Incidental browsers are typically not closely enough attuned to store shelves to guess what offerings the Halloween merchandise replaces … ousts, to be frank about it. And you could certainly say that is far more the concern of the store operators than the store patrons.

But, no matter how you look at it, it’s a curious phenomenon. We have to assume that way-early holiday merchandise stands the best chance of attracting shoppers, or it wouldn’t be put on display.

Apparently, we shoppers are the ones who have lost perspective on what we think of as our holidays.

— From Tribune News Service