By Devyn Briones
Correspondent
Christmas music is an essential for the holiday season. These festive tunes bring people together next to a cozy fire bundled up with a cup of cocoa. Santa’s elves are more than psyched to deck the halls, while Scrooges can’t bear another second of “Jingle Bells.” Countless streaming services provide Christmas playlists so everyone can get into the yuletide spirit–even if it’s two months early.
According to Spotify, most of the platform’s U.S. users start shuffling their Christmas playlists by Nov. 13.
The Christmas mystery, however, is when students at the College shuffle their holiday playlists.
Olivia Suh, a freshman studying marketing, believes there’s no such thing as “too early.”
“Personally, sometimes I turn on Christmas music just to feel the vibes again. I’ll be missing the Christmas excitement when I'm laying on the beach tanning, so I'll put it on my speakers,” Suh said. “I guess that’s an unacceptable time and setting to play Christmas music because my friends get upset and I get weird faces from strangers, but deep down I know people love Christmas music. It's never too early if you love the holiday season this much.”
Sophomore Madisen Stearns, a public health major, is in the same sleigh as Olivia. She said, “Christmas music is good all year!”
However, freshman Anthony Camacho, a math major, believes there is a time that’s too early.
“You should start listening to Christmas music after Thanksgiving. I start listening to it on the first day of December,” Camacho said. “If there's a time that's too early, it's like right after Halloween–that's crazy.”
Surprisingly enough, stores shove yuletide cheer down customers’ throats before they can even release their Black Friday deals. By Oct. 25, Old Navy and Gap had already hit shuffle on their hit holiday tunes, according to Bloomberg.
Petco had their favorite carols playing for shoppers before they could even put away their Halloween decorations, as they start as early as Oct. 31.
Between Nov. 17 and Nov. 26, retail outlets like Rite Aid, Rural King, Walgreens, Pandora, Lowe’s and Burlington are blasting “Silver Bells” faster than you can say “gobble gobble.”
Freshman Ian Gonzales, an engineering major, and Michael Ian Delgado, a freshman management major, gave similar feedback to Camacho’s.
“I think the appropriate time to listen to Christmas music is when December hits. This is because Christmas is in December, so why else would you listen to Christmas music in other months?” Gonzales said. “Other months have different holidays so it just does not seem to make sense to me. I think that it is too early to listen to music anytime before December hits.”
Delgado agreed, saying, “An appropriate time to start listening to Christmas music is right after Thanksgiving. That's also around the same time I start to listen to it too. Anything before Thanksgiving in my mind is too early.”
The feedback concludes that it is either never too early to start listening to Christmas music or it should only be played after the fall holidays. However, no matter how early someone may sing along with Frank Sinatra or Michael Bublé, Santa will never punish them with coal in their stocking.
