The Christmas season is approaching every so quickly, and the one thing I hear almost daily is, "STOP THAT! It's not even Thanksgiving yet! We can't be listening to Christmas music yet!" or the polar opposite, "Dude, Christmas music year round! It brings me joy every day!"I had a good friend of mine who would sing the James Taylor version of "Jingle Bells" in the middle of July, when it's ninety degrees outside. It hits me every time, when is the right time to start listening to Christmas music? I find three common answers: not until after Thanksgiving, when we have our first REAL snow (such as today in midwestern Illinois), and the beginning of December. So when is it?
When should we be listening to Christmas music?
Well that really depends on a lot of things. Who is we? You as a person? A collective group of people? Or do you mean the radios? Let's start with a personal conviction. You can listen to Christmas music any time you feel like it. My personal preference is early November. Like today on my way home from school, while the air around me swirled with wet snow, I opened Spotify and streamed the Relient K Christmas album. Jamming out to "12 Days of Christmas" without a care in the world. Well... except not dying in a slippery car crash, but that's a different story.
Now as for the radios, they usually get it right every year, and almost always fall under the "After Thanksgiving" category. And they don't even use heavily holiday songs until the second week of December. I've always favored what the radios have chosen for the start of Christmas tunes. Now, that being said, there's a whole different fiasco of stores and Christmas junk hung up all over the tiled ceilings.
In the early weeks of October, I walked in to Hobby Lobby to buy some poster tape (which frustratingly, the did not have.) and they had already gone all Christmas tinsel on the place. Though it wasn't all out Christmas decorations, it still frightened me to think that we were that "close" to Christmas season. Which is odd, because Christmas is to celebrate the birth of my Lord, Jesus Christ. That is also something I will post on in the upcoming weeks, as well as Thanksgiving the day of.
Another big ordeal is the whole Christmas lights awesomeness. Last year my family visited a house that owned a radio station and had it's lights programmed with the music on the radio station and activated once you turned on your car's radio. It's was astoundingly entertaining. For about ten seconds. And now it seems like houses spring up all over featuring spectacular lights and displays. My neighborhood, sadly, does not take much part in these festivities. My family doesn't do a whole lot either, just a few red and green lamplights that shine on our house and strands of lights that for a Christmas tree-like outline. Minimalistic yet gratifying. Though there are those people who have their decorations through february, and that peeves me. I'm totally fine with having the decorations though january, it's almost like a mourning period that Christmas is over, but when it spans multiple months, and the tree is still up? It's time for it all to come down.
So I'm finished with my arguments, but what do you think? When should the decorations be brought up from the basement? When should the radios proudly blast holiday tunes? When should you move those Christmas those songs back on to your iPod?
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