When Does Christmas Begin? by Beckett Smith

When does Christmas begin? It’s an age-old question, and one that some other interns seem to have taken upon themselves to answer. Well I’m here to set the record straight.

If you are starting to celebrate Christmas on November 1st, there is something horribly wrong with you.

My family is a proud Christmas-after-Thanksgiving family. Always has been and always will be. It is a foundational memory of mine, driving on Thanksgiving morning to my great-aunts house, blasting my mother’s carefully curated Christmas playlist. From then until December 26th, the only sound echoing throughout the walls of my house was the Barenaked Ladies Christmas album, classic Christmas carols, and (less favorably received) the holiday hymns that my mother insisted on.

Decorating wasn’t even a suggestion until Advent had begun. When you buy a real tree every year, it can’t be. The thing would die days before Christmas Eve. And cookies! If you made all your Christmas cookies in the first week of November, they’d never make it to winter break.

Maybe it’s for the sake of tradition, for reclaiming the joy my younger self felt on that long drive, but Christmas can’t start until after Thanksgiving. Listening to Christmas music, putting up decorations, any of the holiday traditions really feel hollow and meaningless when done too early. Holidays are traditions, built on traditions. When you change those fundamental aspects of Christmas, you change the holiday. And for that reason, I will never celebrate Christmas even a day before Thanksgiving.

7 thoughts on “When Does Christmas Begin? by Beckett Smith

  1. Children, am I going to have to get involved here? LOL. (Typed as I sit next to my cozy fire, instrumental snow scene playing on my YouTube TV, and my beautifully decorated tree. Go ahead and judge me.)

  2. To be quite honest, I respect both viewpoints. I decorate after Thanksgiving, but that doesn’t mean I won’t indulge in a holiday beverage or some Christmas music before turkey day.

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