How thinking about death—mortality salience—drives early Halloween shopping and retail trends

It's becoming as much of a tradition as costumed trick-or-treaters and skeletons crawling across lawns studded with cardboard gravestones: candy corn and jumbo bags of Snickers start popping up on grocery store shelves a few weeks after Independence Day. We all gripe about it, bemoaning the premature send-off of summer and the ephemerality of our very existence.