“It’s Time!” Mariah Carey famously declares every November 1st. She breaks out of the ice, and with her famous song “All I Want For Christmas is You,” her return signals the end of Halloween and the start of the Holiday season. But is it really time? The Holiday season has hefty winter associations, and November 1st is far from the start of winter, both astronomically and meteorologically. The winter solstice (shortest day of the year) is December 21st with the cold weather setting in on December 1st. December 21st allows for a meager five days for celebration, but December 1st allows for a reasonable twenty-five days. So that is it! Christmas begins when winter begins! If only it were so easy. In December it is not winter everywhere. In Australia, for example, they celebrate Christmas on the beach due to the opposing seasons of the southern hemisphere. So does Christmas have to be inherently associated with winter? If not, then is it okay to begin Christmas in the middle of fall? The question of when it is acceptable to celebrate Christmas has puzzled people for generations. This article is here to explain both perspectives and help you decide, once and for all, what the best time to celebrate Christmas is.
There is a growing category of people who believe that Christmas begins the day after Halloween. The lights of the jack-o-lanterns are traded for the lights of the Christmas tree, “Monster Mash” for “Jingle Bells,” warm apple cider for a cup of hot cocoa. Starting holiday celebrations on November 1st and ending on December 26th means that a person would be celebrating the holiday for fifty-five days. Science does say that people who celebrate Christmas earlier are happier. More happiness = better, right? And really, people who celebrate Christmas earlier are doing no harm. They just love Christmas and think it deserves one month instead of two.
But fifty-five days is a long time to celebrate Christmas. The decorations in your house could become a familiar routine; you get so used to them, with the illusion that there is so much time to celebrate, that moments are not used to their best capacity. By Christmas day the decorations are no longer special because they have been there so long. And the Christmas music? Yes, it can put people in a jolly mood, but there is only so much variety, which could quickly get overplayed. Most Christmas songs are a rehash of the same few carols. On the Billboard Top 100 Greatest Holiday Songs, there were four versions of the song, “It’s Beginning to Look a lot Like Christmas.” There were three songs titled “Santa Claus is Coming to Town”, “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)”, “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”, “White Christmas”, “All I Want for Christmas is You”, and “Do You Hear What I Hear”. The rest of the titles had two songs of the same name:
- “Jingle Bells”
- “Jingle Bell Rock”
- “Here Comes Santa Claus (Right Down Santa Claus Lane”
- “Little Drummer Boy”
- “Holly Jolly Christmas”
- “Baby It’s Cold Outside”
- “Sleigh Ride”
- “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”
- “Let it Snow”
- “Last Christmas”
- “I’ll Be Home for Christmas”
- “Home for the Holidays”
- “Winter Wonderland”
- “Carol of the Bells”
- “Mary Did you Know”
- “This Christmas”
- “What Christmas Means to Me”
Out of the top 100 Christmas songs, only 44 of them did not have a song of the same name somewhere else in the list. And that is just the top 100. Every Christmas, more and more renditions are made of the same songs and melodies. Yes, sometimes covers are drastically different, and yes, new Christmas songs are made, but they are few and far between.
Then there is the opposing side: the people who believe that Christmas should start after Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving does seem like it gets overshadowed nowadays. By Thanksgiving, the stores have already had their Christmas decorations out for weeks. Thanksgiving has very few movies about it because it is less commercialized than Christmas. Besides a turkey, there are few recognizable symbols. It is a quiet holiday (in theory, not in practice… households can definitely be loud with controversial conversation); a time of reflection, gratitude, and an all-you-can-eat buffet right in your own home. But none of that appeals to the commercial world. No, they need big, flashy colors with bright lights and gifts and Santa figures and outdoor decorations bigger than people’s backyards. Thanksgiving is not as marketable, so it gets largely ignored. The day after Thanksgiving is Black Friday, arguably the most commercial day of the year. Thanksgiving is a time of transition between gratitude and commercialism.
However, Thanksgiving is not a perfect marker. The holiday changes the day it is celebrated each year, which makes it an unstable milestone. The earliest it can be celebrated is November 22nd, and the latest is November 28th. That means a person can spend from twenty-seven to thirty-three days celebrating, which is a significant difference, especially to someone really looking forward to Christmas. But on a later Thanksgiving, the anticipation of said person would build, making them feel all the more elated when they could finally begin the celebration. Still, Thanksgiving is only an American holiday, so it cannot be a universal marker of the beginning of the Christmas season.
There is no true answer to when Christmas starts, so after much self-debate I will share what I have personally decided to do. I will follow the theory of Christmas gradualism, celebrating Christmas in stages. To begin celebrating, on November 20, it is okay to think about Christmas and plan for it. In the next few days, you can listen to a few songs, and some days later, you can watch a movie. A day or two before Thanksgiving, you can start settling up the Christmas decorations, though not the tree… a premature Christmas tree in your house is a death sentence to Thanksgiving. And once Thanksgiving is over, the winter holiday extravaganza begins.
But at the end of the day, the choice is yours. Whether you are celebrating now or waiting until December, or whatever holiday you are celebrating, I hope you enjoy the incoming holiday season!
