You’re sitting in the car one November morning, about to head to school and learn all day, thinking still of projects and schoolwork rather than the holidays. Yet, when you turn on your favourite news station, you’re blasted with the same, mundane Christmas songs that you heard last year, and the year before that, and the year before that, and — I think you get my point.
Then, when you finish your exhausting day of school and go back home, you find that suddenly, inexplicably — as if the entire neighbourhood decided as a collective hive mind — the whole street is covered with dazzling lights over the houses.
That’s when you realize that Christmas carols and giant, swollen Santas are all you’ll be hearing and seeing for the next two months.
Now, hear me out — there’s nothing wrong with celebrating and getting in the festive mood for the most glamorous holiday. As Andy Williams’ hit goes, “It’s the most wonderful time of the year[1].” Additionally, a Huffpost survey conducted in 2013 showed that Christmas Day was America’s happiest day in 2012 [2]. Such an event wholly deserves the attention it gets; entire streets and shopping malls go up in brilliant light shows, people get to decorate their houses, sing carols together, and the best part? You get to eat as many cookies as you want.
However, celebrations can quickly become colourless when stretched out far longer than they should be. This is often the case with Christmas, where, even in the middle of November, radio stations have already started exploiting its compelling lull; we’ve all experienced the persistent pestering buzz of Christmas carols in your ears. And sure, it may be fun at first to drown yourself in festivities. But by the time the end of December rolls around and it’s finally the night for the real Santa to climb down your chimney, all you can think of is escaping the infinite loop of Christmas carols flooding your radio stations. Christmas is no longer a sugar rush of happiness and a spike of joy. It becomes a deadening marathon, testing how long you can keep up your festive spirit, becoming exhausting.
Additionally, when the hype tires as Christmas draws close, excitement can quickly change to disappointment. This ultimately stems from the monumental expectations placed on Christmas at the beginning of the year, which can often be more exciting than the actual holiday [4].
Then there’s the question of if you can even celebrate Christmas during November — the holidays are still over a month away and school is still going in full force. In fact, the month of November consistently ranked as some of the saddest days in the same Huffpost survey [2], which is understandable considering the terrible weather and the looming threat of exams. Trying to celebrate when you can’t enjoy it to the fullest potential merely to dull the excitement in the following days can only be considered a poor usage of time and effort.
As potentially the greatest holiday of the year, Christmas brings correspondingly compelling festivities and cheer that everybody could do with more of. However, like all other holidays, Christmas is best highlighted as a special time — a single month jam-packed with joy and fun — rather than being spread out across months.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFtb3EtjEic
[2] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/happiest-saddest-days-of-the-year_n_2623553
