Don’t Autumn My Summer

The pumpkin decor may be coming out, but I’m holding onto summer as long as I can.

Photo: Richard B. Levine/Zuma Press

The end is near. On July 29, I was scrolling innocently, getting my daily fix of short-video dopamine after work, when I was interrupted by my first fall-themed Instagram reel of the season: an unwelcome compilation of pumpkin-themed consumer goods set to a crackly midcentury Halloween song.

The weather is as summery as ever: Highs in New York still reach the 90s. But something has changed. My preferred source of digital opium is pushing me videos of saturated orange landscapes, glowing candles and cups of tea posed in front of stacks of antique books.

Since my algorithm has noted my interest—disgust and delight have equal weight when all you measure is attention—in holiday-themed videos, I now have to contend not only with the disappointment of an early fall on my social-media platforms, but the abject horror of Christmas in August. I’m no Ebeneezer Scrooge, but I like to keep my visions of sugar-plums firmly in December where they belong.

Autumn has long been creeping earlier into the cultural calendar. As summers grow hotter and longer, everyone seems all the more eager to bust out the pumpkin spice and start decorating for Halloween as soon as possible. Starbucks launched the pumpkin spice latte in Oct. 2003. More than two decades later, the coffee chain now starts serving the Cheez Whiz orange drink in late August. My local CVS has already begun stacking purple and green boxes of Halloween candy by the checkout area. Same for the piles of autumnal decor at big box stores.

I’m not the first person to notice our culture’s outsized aesthetic obsession with autumn. An infamous 2019 tweet dubbed this pumpkin-spice-dusted trend “Christian Girl Autumn,” poking fun at the pedestrian tastes of suburban, middle-class white women who go wild for Starbucks drinks and Target tchotchkes. At this point, there’s a touch of winking irony to the stranger pumpkin-spice products that hit store shelves in the fall—deodorant, hard seltzer, hummus—which seem to exist to generate social-media coverage about our out-of-control obsession with autumn more than anything else.

My own humbugging comes less from an opposition to pumpkin-themed consumer goods than from my abiding love of summertime. Where other people complain of mugginess and oppressive heat, I feel most alive in warm weather. It’s what makes summer such a social season. The days are long and the nights temperate, practically begging us to get out of the house.

I begin each June with the restless anxiety that I must use the next three months well. I must throw the right number of parties, have the exact amount of fun nights out in the exact right outfits and add in a weekend trip to the beach or an excursion to the mountains while I’m at it. Since I have a September birthday, the past few summers have also come with the prickling realization that my 20s are dwindling, and that I need to wring every last drop of joy out of them while I can.

A general name for what I am feeling is FOMO (fear of missing out). FOMO is often read as a bad thing, an irrational insecurity that drives us to engage in unpleasant social activities. But I think this kind of anxiety is often a force for good. It’s my FOMO that pushes me to say yes to a friend’s barbecue invite or decide to trek to the Rockaways for a beach day. Without being fearful of missing out, I’d fail to embark upon many friendship-solidifying experiences while the water’s still warm.

Autumn, on the other hand, is all about aesthetically pleasing isolation. The visual signals that make up any good autumn-hype video reflect the ways colder weather pushes us indoors and away from other people. It’s all cozy cups of tea and bundles of chunky blankets, a movie flickering in the background.

Of course, the colder months contain plenty of socialization. There are football tailgates and major holidays abounding. But fall-centric content rarely romanticizes Halloween parties or family gatherings to watch the big game. Instead, it’s a succession of nostalgic movie recommendations and single-serve mug-based desserts.

For our antisocial age, the change from summer to fall is so welcome because it represents a release of social pressure. A time of FOMO melts into comforting aloneness; the push to go out into the world gives way to permission to burrow safely away from it. In a culture that craves permission to hibernate, I want to seize life while it’s ripe, to let its juice dribble down my chin. I always want one more Saturday night spent on a friend’s rooftop, one more dip in the ocean, one more chance to wear a linen dress to one more backyard party, one more late sunset. It always slips through my fingers in the end, but never before September.

Ms. Camp is senior newsletter editor at Free Expression.