Halloween Creep: Labor Day Edition

Above: Disney’s Halloween Time is a leading cause of Halloween Creep, extending up to and even before Labor Day.

We have been keeping track of Halloween Creep (a term we first used here, to describe the ever-expanding timeframe of the Halloween season) for so long that it’s become old news; nevertheless, we are going to mention it again in this Special Labor Day Edition. This year, once more, Halloween is arriving in Los Angeles a little bit sooner than before. Of course, how one calculates this depends on exactly what event is used to identify the official beginning of the season. Is it (in reverse order of how things usually happen) when decorations go up, when the major attractions open, or when merchandise hits store shelves? Well, now it seems that Labor Day marks the transition from Summer Fun to Halloween Horror.

Over a decade ago, when Disneyland’s Halloween Time began on September 14, we joked that the next time the 13th fell on a Friday in September, Universal Studios Hollywood and/or Knotts Berry Farm would launch their Halloween theme parks on that day, expanding their run to seven weeks – over a month and a half. That joke has since become reality; in fact, September 13 barely seems like an early start date anymore. We have gone far beyond that – all the way to the first Monday of September, when Labor Day falls.

In a short post way back in 2007, we linked to a New York Times article prophetically titled “After Labor Day, Go Directly to Halloween.” The subject was retail stores like Wal-Mart and Target putting Halloween merch on sale in early in September because customer demand started spiking immediately after Labor Day. Today, it’s no longer a matter of decorations and costumes on store shelves; this year Universal’s Halloween Horror Nights starts on Thursday, September 5 – a mere three days after Labor Day.

In fact, Universal’s Halloween Horror Nights has been starting the Thursday after Labor Day since 2021. Because of the way the calendar fell, that resulted in opening nights on September 9, 8 and 7 in 2021, 2022, and 2023, respectively. 2024 is the first year when Halloween creep has pushed HHN‘s opening into the very first week of September. By starting that early and extending its schedule through Sunday, November 3, Horror Nights will run for nearly two full months – something that would have seemed incredible when we first started documenting Halloween events back in 2004.

Moreover, HHN is not even first out of the gate. Other Halloween and Halloween-adjacent events are already open. Nostalgic Nights in Haddonfield, this year’s installment of SugarMynt’s annual Halloween-themed exhibition, held its opening night reception on August 31. Warner Bros. launched Beetlejuice Beetlejuice: The Afterlife Experience on August 23. The ghostly immersive play Masq! began its run at Heritage Square Museum on August 16; it will continue during October and November at Mountainview Mausoleum. Finally, Disneyland Resort has been offering Halloween Time since August 23. Not to mention: you only had to walk through a major retail outlet last month to see that Halloween had reached store shelves long before Labor Day.

Individually, these events may not seem big enough, scary enough, or seasonal enough to signal the true beginning of this year’s Los Angeles Halloween festivities (the Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Afterlife Experience is timed more to the release date of the new film than to Halloween). However, with L.A.’s biggest Halloween theme park opening for business on Thursday, there is no way to deny that the Season of Fear is here.

It’s not as if we’re complaining about this. The sooner things begin, the more time we have to enjoy as many events and attractions as possible. Now the only question is whether Labor Day will remain the bulwark that prevents Halloween’s biggest guns from firing the starting shot in August.