By Lacey Okamura
Staff Writer
It’s winter. Temperatures are dropping and the sun seems to set earlier and earlier everyday. Many of us have seasonal depression, desperately trying to get through the last few weeks of school and work before the holiday break.
People have different ways of coping with the changes. Some people try picking up a new hobby, engage in healthy habits like working out and staying active, or changing their diet. Others may go to therapy, or listen to music to cheer themselves up. But there’s one more method of coping that I can’t quite get behind: decorating for Christmas early.
I get it. Christmas decorations are merry and bright, and they can lighten the mood during an otherwise very dark season. The holidays are a time when we forget about our troubles and focus on our friends and family. Decorating early can invoke some of those feelings and help overcome the looming sense of doom that occurs right around November.
December flies by (trust me I know), and we want to soak up the holiday magic for as long as possible. I’m in full support of keeping decorations up way past New Years, for all of January, even for some of February. But, November should be reserved for Thanksgiving.
Thanksgiving, in my opinion, is an underappreciated holiday. Not only is the food amazing and just as delicious as during Christmas time, but it doesn’t bring on the pressures of gift giving that Christmas does. Thanksgiving is a perfect little break that allows us to reset and refocus our lives before making that final push through the end of the year.
Putting up Christmas decorations before Thanksgiving undermines the time allotted for appreciating the holiday. Similar to how February is for Valentine’s Day, October is for Halloween and December is for Christmas, November should be reserved for Thanksgiving. These are very clear, standard rules that I think we can all agree make perfect sense.
Thanksgiving is all about fall. It’s about leaves and pumpkins and the orange and brown color scheme. Throwing in snowflakes, green and red hanging lights and Christmas trees completely throws off of the Thanksgiving vibe.
I will concede, however, that it is alright to start listening to Christmas music before December. This is simply because there is no such thing as “Thanksgiving music,” and I think it’s fair to use music as a way of getting into the holiday spirit without disrespecting Thanksgiving.
This may be a controversial take, as I know many people enjoy putting up their Christmas decorations as soon as the weather turns cold. If putting up your decorations is absolutely the only thing that will get you through the end of the year, by all means put them up.
But I still think that the majority of Christmas decorations shouldn’t be put up until after Thanksgiving, so we get to enjoy both holidays separately and for a decent amount of time.
