What is it with this eerie “Nightmare Before Christmas” mix of Halloween and Christmas? Halloween is just around the corner; we have one month until Thanksgiving, and Christmas decorations have already taken over local superstores.

There is something gravely wrong about seasonal commercialism these days. To us, Halloween commonly means candy and costumes. Thanksgiving means eating, napping and spending time with family. Christmas means trees, caroling, opening presents and spending time with family.

To Hallmark and Wal-Mart, it is time to make the most of the year’s revenue. It is one thing to help foster the holiday spirits of the public by offering a large array of decorations and gifts, and it is another to exploit anxious holiday-lovers by stocking up two months before the actual holiday.

If Christmas decorations are on sale before Thanksgiving, it’s a problem. If they are on sale before Halloween, it’s just ludicrous.

We should be able to enjoy Halloween and Thanksgiving without worrying about buying a reindeer lawn display before anybody else in the neighborhood. It takes away from the significance of these holidays.

Superstores often pride themselves on customer service. Providing Christmas decorations and gifts before Halloween is not customer service. Providing Halloween decorations and costumes before Halloween is. Corporations need to cater more to the needs of the public before they conspire more ways to seduce consumers into spending more money than they need to.

And that isn’t all. During the two-month period superstores have to lure their customers into prematurely buying decorations, the quantity of stuff they sell grows by ridiculous amounts. Lawn decorations take over the entire gardening section, making it difficult for customers to find products without a reindeer or Santa next to them.

Also, how many different kinds of stockings could one want? Entire aisles become dedicated to stockings big, small, fuzzy, soft, plain, glittery and so on.

Customers should come first – not the money they bring. Wal-Mart and other superstores need to hold off on the Christmas madness until after Thanksgiving.

Christmas mixed with Halloween does not work well; Tim Burton has already shown us what that would look like in “The Nightmare Before Christmas.”

Saerom Yoo is a sophomore news-editorial journalism major from Pusan, South Korea. Her column appears every Thursday.