Happy Halloween – or, as online coupon site RetailMeNot would have it, a joyous OctoNovemCember! You know they’re very, very serious about their holiday mashup because they’ve given it a “dictionary definition” and a gratuitous pronunciation aid:
OctoNovemCember has an official mascot, Pumpkin-Headed Turkey Claus, with its own Twitter feed.
From the website:
Who is Pumpkin-Headed Turkey Claus? Why he’s the King of OctoNovemCember, that magical shopping season when the great deals from one-day-only holiday sales are available every day. He embodies all that is good about the holidays, from the pleasant glow of a jack-o-lantern to the comforting warmth of a Thanksgiving turkey to the gift-giving spirit of old St. Nick.
OctoNovemCember is a newly minted gimmick, but the faux-holiday tradition goes back many years. For more on Festivus, Grouponicus, and other fake fêtes, see my 2010 post, “Holidays for the Rest of Us,” which links to a Visual Thesaurus column, “Happy Made-Up Holidays.” And for more on Christmas-creepy holiday marketing, see “Calendar Says October; Retailers Say It’s Christmas.”
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* Cherpumple … or turducken?
Okay, so the pronunciation aid is gratuitous, but they get bonus points for including an IPA version as well as the American-dictionary-style version, since they actually managed to get the IPA basically right (apart from having two primary stresses in a single word, and leaving out the closing slash).
Posted by: Q. Pheevr | October 31, 2012 at 03:16 PM
I suppose we should be grateful that they didn't include New Years .
Posted by: Nick | November 05, 2012 at 06:43 AM