This year, as soon as the clock struck midnight on Halloween, stores across the United States seemingly flipped a switch and suddenly Christmas came about two months early! Wandering the stocked aisles of Geneseo’s Walmart, bits and pieces of Christmas began to appear even before Halloween.
It’s not just the big wholesale corporate stores—small shops and local businesses are beginning to show signs of the Advent season too. Yet here we are, toward the beginning of November, and Thanksgiving isn’t for another two and a half weeks. There aren’t nearly as many advertisements for Thanksgiving when compared to the countless Christmas ones. It seems that Thanksgiving is not enough to stem the tide of Kwanzaa, Hanukkah and Christmas, while Halloween is barely keeping that season at bay.
Preparation for the holidays shouldn’t begin before Halloween—it should hardly even begin before Thanksgiving. Otherwise, all the things we enjoy about it won’t feel so remarkable by the time Christmas finally comes around. Yet, businesses continue to squeeze out as much of our hard-earned cash as possible by beginning the bombardment of holiday season goods and commercials earlier and earlier each year. Companies could put out wreaths and menorahs as early as they wanted, and people would buy them, so corporations continue to push Christmas prematurely.
Why do we fall into that trap? Are companies just so skilled at promoting their products that we immediately succumb to it? Businesses aren’t necessarily good at selling Christmas products; they’re good at selling the idea of a perfect Christmas. The intense desire during the holiday season, especially in older people with children and families, is to create a wonderful, unforgettable day with friends, relatives, delicious food, laughter and love—all the ingredients needed for a perfect day. So, the amount of preparation that goes into it will naturally be immense, with at least a full month to do it. The expectation and planning that goes into big events like these festive celebrations is often what people relish the most, and therein lies the problem.
We love the anticipation because we can imagine exactly what it will be like and fantasize about that flawless ideal. We can make the day whatever we want in our minds, excluding the burnt food, family fights and disappointing presents. Ultimately, there is a hint of disappointment at the end of the day every year because it didn’t live up to the impossible dream that we spent weeks crafting. Often, we think that, if only we had put in more work or time, it would have been perfect. So, for the next year, that’s what we do—we start to plan further in advance and spend more time and energy on creating what we believe will be the best holiday ever, which we never quite achieve.
Not only are our memories of past Christmases tinged with regrets for what-might-have-been; we glorify the celebrations of our youth. We remember the snow-filled days of our younger selves, where the excitement of the holidays was potent, and we didn’t have the stress of putting everything together. We want to have the holidays of our youth, but they have become an ideal as well—our youth’s flaws have been removed, and because we believe in the infallibility of our own memories, we use those Christmases as proof that we can have an unrivaled celebration.
As for us college students far away from home, we just want a comforting, cozy environment as similar to home as we can get. Vivid memories of winter celebrations provide the perfect model in which to create that feeling, so we do so as soon as we can.
It all comes down to the perfection we crave in everything, but because we remember the holidays more dramatically than other times in our lives, we place more importance on perfection during the holiday season than at other times of the year. If we could just do it all without a hitch, we could maybe get satisfaction from it that would carry over into the rest of the year. These are the memories we rely on to keep us going until we can create some more.
Starting the season later means there would be less time to stress about every detail in a holiday that is supposed to be delightful and relaxing, and less time to fantasize about a picture-perfect day that will never end up coming. The holiday season is fraught with vices, and if it wasn’t, we wouldn’t remember it—we need those lovely imperfections to keep us on our toes and truly appreciate what’s good about this time of year.
Olivia Schmidt is a biology and English double major sophomore who really does love Christmas, but not before Thanksgiving.