We all know someone who hangs up lights in October. We all know people who go crazy for Halloween and dress themselves, their houses, and their cats up. We know people who spend a week preparing for Thanksgiving or save up money for a month for black Friday. The last few months of the year are packed so full of holidays and events and fun that there’s something that everyone can love and look forward to, even if it is just the end of the year and the beginning of a new one, followed by that ubiquitous list of New Year’s resolutions that very infrequently seem to come true.
For some reason, however, there is one group of holiday junkies that bears the brunt of the judgment — the Christmas crazies.
Sometimes before even a single decoration happens, before anything about Christmas is even breathed, naysayers pop out of their Halloween jack-o’-lanterns or just from little cracks in the woodwork to start complaining about people who put up lights early. There are articles and pictures and general grumpiness regarding anyone who starts celebrating Christmas in the end of October or beginning of November. Really, there is no reason to become so enraged about something as little as celebrating early, not this year, not any year.
From a purely practical sense, celebrating the season in November is economically sound. You beat the sales, you get the jumps on gifts, you order all of your presents with your Amazon Prime shipping and get them in time to wrap them up and send them out, and you buy decorations before the big stores run out. You can make your pocketbook happy because you're not spending all the gift and food and decoration money all at once. Celebrating Christmas in November can alleviate a lot of financial stress and family stress and give you more time to bake cookies instead of worrying about rush shipping, but there is a whole lot more to it than that.
When you think of the word Christmas, there is generally an image (or a few), that pop into your head. There are Christmas trees and Santa hats and presents and snowmen. There are Christmas lights and reindeer and snow, lots of snow, even though in so many places, Christmas hardly brings snow at all. With these images, these icons of Christmas, there is a whole feeling. The holiday season feeling, invoked automatically by all of these things, whether they be commercialized or natural. The holiday season is a time of year that is warm, bubbly, a time when people’s focus is on doing good for other people and trying to help other people. During the Christmas season, the number of people volunteering at food banks or making meals to help homeless and lonely people increases drastically. Salvation army sends out their people with bells, people hang wreaths on their doors and give just a little more, stores see huge influxes of business at the same time that thrift stores and donation bins see influxes of items received.
Christmas music plays constantly at practically every store, with classic tunes that are cheerful and happy and bright, songs that bring back memories of childhoods and caroling and Christmas trees. People decide to visit their families and travel long distances to do so, to rekindle friendships and say hello, and long distance travel during the holiday season sees an increase of 23 percent to 54 percent. Homes fill themselves with the smells of baked goods and huge family dinners, and people wrap themselves up in sending out holiday cards and baking and making and buying presents for family and friends. There is not a single other holiday where there is such a huge focus on gift-giving, which is in any culture a positive thing. For people interested in family and community and religion, Christmas has been shown to show a definite increase in happiness.
Christmas is a time where do-gooding, gift-giving, and well-being reign, and it is a season that is associated with such a degree of happiness and health and cheer that it would be a shame to let it only last for December of a part of December. The holiday season really starts around Thanksgiving and lasts until the hangovers of New Year’s Day wear off. It is a positive season, one that many people look forward to and celebrate, and after the stress of an entire year, of our same jobs and in this year particularly, the election, we need a time to unwind. People relax and rejoice during the holiday season, and it is a time when some people choose to surround themselves with beautiful things, happy things, and family, and what could be wrong with that?
