Cut the blur, celebrate holidays individually

By: Steven Goodman – Columnist, Sophomore

Now that Thanksgiving is officially over, we can start preparing for Christmas! This is the general consensus among most people, but two, three or even four weeks ago signs of Christmas were all around. Stores began to put up Christmas decorations for sale, places such as Walmart have signs counting down the days to Dec. 25 some 40 days prior and Christmas music begins to play. More often than not Christmas, Thanksgiving and even sometimes Halloween (or at least the aftermath of it) all get mixed together in a melting pot to the point where it’s impossible to tell where one starts and the other begins.

Wouldn’t it be better if we just focused on one holiday at a time? Let Thanksgiving have its month and let Christmas have its own as well, without creeping into November. I don’t understand why Christmas trees went on sale mid-November or why radio stations already started to play “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” two weeks before Thanksgiving. Both of these holidays are great on their own, so just let each one have its turn. Don’t get me wrong, Christmastime is one of my favorite times of the year, but it is far too dragged out. Starting the Christmas season in Thanksgiving does two major things.

First, it takes away from Thanksgiving because everyone is already making plans for Christmas before they even see their families on Turkey Day. How can we be thankful for what we have if we’re already thinking about what we want/will get on Christmas Day?

Second, starting this season early can cause a person to tire of it before Christmas actually arrives. Getting into the Christmas spirit starting with December (or at least the day after Thanksgiving) means just three or four weeks.
This might seem like too short to you, but starting earlier in November can mean a month and a half of Christmas music and decorations. This might not seem like a bad thing, but too much of anything can be rough.

Two other Flyer News columnists seem to share the same ideology that each holiday should be saved for its own day and there is no need to build up to Christmas or Thanksgiving for so long. Columnist Paul Gutbrod in a Nov. 20 article and
Opinions Editor Matthew Worsham in an Oct. 30 article both mention that what makes a holiday a holiday is that it is different from the “normality” of each day. I couldn’t agree more with this thought. Holidays are supposed to be special occasions to give us something different from the normal, hence the term.

Christmas and Thanksgiving are each their own, special holidays. There’s no reason to start thinking about Christmas so far in advance that November becomes one big blur of turkey, cookies, Christmas lights and families coming in and out of town. Even though stores will try to push the start to an earlier date each year, try to just ignore it and focus on the holiday at hand.

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