Every year around late August, it happens. The weather is still 92 degrees. You’re sweating through your shirt. The trees are as green as they’ve been all summer. Then someone announces pumpkin spice is back. Apparently that’s all it takes.
Pumpkin spice has somehow become the unofficial opening ceremony of fall. The funny part is that pumpkin spice isn’t even pumpkin. It’s cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, cloves, maybe a little allspice if you’re feeling adventurous. It’s a spice blend we’ve had for generations. Someone just gave it better marketing.
Now it has become an entire personality. Coffee, cookies, candles, dog treats, protein powder, cereal, soap, air fresheners. At this point, if you told me there was a pumpkin spice printer, I’d probably believe you.
What’s interesting is that people don’t seem to buy pumpkin spice because they’re craving those specific spices. They’re buying the feeling attached to them. It’s the first hint that summer is winding down. Football is coming back. Leaves are about to change. Sweaters are making their annual appearance even though it’s still too warm to wear one comfortably. Pumpkin spice became less about flavor and more about permission, permission to start thinking about fall.
I can’t even be mad at it. Every season has something like this. The first cookout of summer. The first snowfall. The first holiday song that somehow appears before Halloween. They’re little markers that tell us life is moving again. Pumpkin spice just happens to have the best marketing department.
It keeps coming back every year not because people suddenly forget what cinnamon tastes like, but because everyone likes having something that announces a new season has arrived. Even if the temperature completely disagrees.