Photo Courtesy of jweekly.com
With Halloween over, the holidays are on the horizon, but when is it appropriate to begin participation in Christmas festivities? Some say November 1st. The ending of Halloween brings the Christmas Spirit around pretty quickly, as Christmas music starts playing as soon as the calendar flips to November. That’s one side of the aisle though. The other argument is that Christmas and holiday festivities should start after Thanksgiving.
First of all, Christmas music should start after Thanksgiving, not Halloween. If you start listening to Christmas music on November 1st, the music will become stale and old fast. The holiday season should be confined to a month or maybe a little over. The Christmas season should absolutely not last from Nov 1st to New Years. Christmas music all contains similar sounds and melodies of the holiday spirit, so that music will often be repeated by radio stations. That means this music will become old and repetitive, especially if you start listening on November 1st.
If you were to start all of your Christmas fun in early November and celebrate through New Years, you would be celebrating for a 6th of the year! That is a long time and while the significance of Christmas should not be disregarded, no other holiday gets as much buildup.
Listening to Christmas music on November 1st also creates a false sense of hope that Christmas is around the corner. If you are celebrating in early November, the buildup is just too long. Nobody wants to get excited about Christmas then have to wait nearly 2 months for it to even happen. By the time you get there, everything is overblown and old. Rarity defines value by a lot of things. Diamonds are valuable because they are rare. If we had trillions of diamonds then they wouldn't be worth anything.
Christmas time is valuable and it is treasured because it is a short time throughout the year that we can do things that we wouldn't normally do like take weeks off of work and school and enjoy family more while participating in light shows, gingerbread houses, and eggnog drinking. If that season is expanded too far out it won't be nearly as special and the value of the season would drop tremendously.
According to a Bustle poll, 52% of people think Christmas music should wait until after Thanksgiving, while 26% think November 1st is the optimal day. The Majority of people think Christmas music should wait until after Thanksgiving and yet we still hear Mariah Carey’s “All I want for Christmas is You” blasting through the grocery store loudspeakers the day after Halloween.
In retrospect, it doesn’t matter too much when you start listening to Christmas music and participating in holiday festivities, but for those of you who do that, consider waiting a little longer before you deck the halls. Christmas would be a lot more magical if you waited and confined the fun to a smaller time frame. Besides, Thanksgiving is a pretty cool holiday that is worth participating in. Proceed with caution when entering public places if you do not wish to hear Christmas music because it will be there.