No Early Birds This Holiday Shopping Season?

In 2025, consumers were hot to get a head-start on holiday shopping as tariff concerns nudged shoppers to secure gift list items months before Black Friday.

This year, analysts say that urgency has “largely disappeared” as Americans push holiday shopping back toward the “traditional timeline.”

‘Christmas in August’ Hype Fizzles

New Coresight Research data found that a mere 24.7% of consumers had started holiday shopping by late August, down from 31.9% in 2025, suggesting the fizzling of the “Christmas in August” mentality.

What’s more, analysts say the trend is more pronounced among the consumer groups that were the most “aggressive” early-shoppers last year. Households earning north of $100,000 saw early shopping fall from 50.8% to 27.2%, while 18–29-year-olds dropped from 42.1% to 22.2%.