I don't get why they didn't have enough time to toss together a small event. Or heck even reuse a old event. You want to smooth over a player base who is a little upset from no event? Apply one of the older events for people to play through, I dunno.
They would have been wise to stick to the original idea of planning to add the Saint's wake items to a GS vendor for a short while.

No offense to FFXIV and it's holiday events, but most of them take 5-10 minutes to compete with reading the story. This is as far as I know the only mmo that cancelled the Halloween event. =/ You know what they aren't going to skip out on.. adding last years events items to that cash shop ;P haha.