Christmas pastries in August: cinnamon stars lying in the sun

Supermarkets don't take the seasons too seriously. While people are looking forward to what will likely be the last summer weekend of the year, the first packages of gingerbread have been piling up in the narrow supermarket aisles for days. Retailers have declared the Christmas season quite suddenly, giving some people quite a fright. It feels like yesterday was April? And isn't the Easter bunny still wrapped in gold paper on the kitchen shelf? It's high time he made room for it. For Santa Clauses, Christmas cookies, and cinnamon stars.

Retail is a few months ahead of the calendar again this year. Instead of pumpkin cookies and canned lentil stew blocking the way to the checkout, as is appropriate for the season, you simply can't get past gingerbread with white chocolate coating and XXL marzipan potatoes. They're everywhere. Yet there's a blatant imbalance between supply and demand in the shopping carts of any supermarket. In September, people seem to prefer pushing savoy cabbage, chestnuts, and plums to spiced cookies, sheep, and chocolate Santa Clauses.

A survey by the Cologne-based polling institute YouGov confirms these observations. According to the survey, almost three-quarters of all respondents reject the offer of Christmas sweets in summer and autumn. It's only from November onward that people start buying Santa Clauses, stars, and elves with frosting and golden hair. And then, of course, in abundance. According to YouGov, last year, in November alone, almost 180 million packages of Christmas treats passed over supermarket shelves, not including thefts. But: November is still more than 40 days away.

Rewe, Lidl, Aldi Nord, Aldi Süd, and all the others will have to wait a little longer until the great, collective search for the annual Christmas gluttony begins. Unless the 20 percent who, according to a YouGov survey, are already excited about the offer , really make a splash.

But is it really that bad? There are several reasons why you should buy Christmas candy by September at the latest. One is that today, to the day, it's 100 days until Christmas Eve. If you start preparing now—ordering gifts, making cards, baking cookies—you'll avoid the major pre-Christmas burnout in December. Maybe then you'll actually find some contemplation between the years.

If you start preparing now—and the most important preparation is the food—you'll also have enough time to leisurely put on that winter fat. This won't wait until the new year, but rather as early as November, and will justify that new gym membership by January at the latest.

So, as soon as Christmas cookies overflow the supermarket shelves in August, it's worth acting quickly. Because who knows when the remaining three-quarters of the September Christmas monsters will realize that, according to supermarket logic, winter follows immediately after summer. Perhaps it's time to not just buy gingerbread, dominoes, speculatius biscuits, and the like now, but to stock up on them right away. Don't let the whole sugar fest sell out by October—that would be truly dramatic.