Driving home from work a few weeks ago, I was met by a painting of red and green as thousands of twinkling lights colored which colored the city for all the world to see. Compounded by the ungodly early snow, I couldn’t stop myself from thinking this time of year’s biggest cliche: it was beginning to look a lot like Christmas.
But was it really? See, when I was confronted with this scene whose beauty would make Monet combust in ecstasy, it was still the first week of November, just a few days after Halloween. I love the winter-time festivities its celebration brings, but even I had to wonder if it was too early for Christmas. And further, when was it appropriate to the question when was it appropriate to officially begin the holiday season? Granted, I couldn’t really blame mother nature for the snowy catastrophe we caused with global warming, but I wanted the justification to blame my fellow humans for the reds and greens which blinded my eyes. So I began my research.
Though varying websites give different projections based on biases and sampling methods (the AP Stats student in me is going off), many believe the population of Christian-identifying Americans rests around the 210 million person range. Despite that number declining with every year, both the number of people celebrating and the length of Christmas is increasing. One NBC affiliate even claims that 40% of people begin their holiday shopping before Halloween. Why is this the case? Do people really love the gift exchange ritual so much that they’ll defy their own beliefs to do it? With all of these questions in mind, I set out on a mini-exploration of public opinion of Christmas over time.
Many are aware that the original subset of Christianity was tiny and blasphemous to the government-sponsored beliefs of the time; as such, the original celebrations of Jesus’ birth were confined solely to that day with occasional spillage into the days around. The explosion of popularity created a frenzy of passion to celebrate the joyous season for as long as possible. Nowadays, if you look at it quantitatively, Christmas festivities take up roughly three months every year–that’s over ninety days straight of the jolly fat man (and Jesus, too, I guess).
Brought with the excitement of celebration, the number of gifts each person needed to buy steadily increased as well. Little by little, the holiday began moving earlier to allow lower-income families the opportunity to comfortably participate and space out their monetary contributions. Cynicists and skeptics alike tend to blame the creep on the commercialization of the holiday, yet they fail to take into account why those who struggle on a day to day basis support this rampant materialization.
As disappointingly unsexy as the explanations of struggle are, they’re true. People have been complaining about the Christmas’ impending approach and its Halloween connection since at least 1968; yet if the holiday truly was getting earlier every year after that initial jump as many claim, it would have clearly overtaken the spooky times by now. Easily. It is simply just the faulty perception of humanity which allows us to have this very same conversation year after year after year–a conclusion which allows me to feel both heartfelt and still justify my saltines, if only a little.
So the next time you see your neighbor leaving their Christmas lights until March or encounter a friend who wants to celebrate June’s midway celebration, take a deep breath, relax, and just try to enjoy the eggnog. After all, (when you’re not trying to write a blog and prove the opposite) is there anything really wrong with bringing out the joyous cheer a bit earlier than December in the names of giving and familial love?
