Point: Patrick Markey
I love Christmas music. Christmas songs are nostalgic, fun and cheerful. However, there’s a reason people don’t unironically listen to Bing Crosby in the middle of August. There’s an appropriate time to listen to Christmas music, and no, it’s not the first day of November. After Thanksgiving is the only acceptable time to listen Christmas music. If you listen to All I Want for Christmas is You by Mariah Carey while you still have Halloween candy, you should be terminated.
If you listen to Christmas music in early November, it’ll get old come early December. Christmas music isn’t the greatest to begin with, so why make it worse by listening to it for an extra month? Like eating candy canes and wearing Santa hats, Christmas music is exclusive to Christmas. There’s a reason Santa doesn’t show up in shopping malls the moment Halloween ends.
Christmas time is like no other time of the year. While it may be hard to suppress Christmas cheer, celebrating Christmas prematurely waters down the excitement of the holiday as a whole. So just relax, and hold off on Frosty the Snowman for at least until after Thanksgiving.
Counterpoint: Ned Storer
There is no reason to hold off on Christmas music until December. While I agree that it can be flat-out obnoxious to crank “Jingle Bell Rock” in the middle of October, the Christmas season begins after Halloween. Christmas songs, while perhaps not fundamentally masterful pieces of music at their core, can stir up powerful feelings of excitement and nostalgia. Why should we wait so long to enjoy them?
Temperatures typically fall off a cliff in the first few weeks of November, truly bringing the winter season to our attention. Most people associate the holiday season with the frigid weather, so it’s natural for excitement to be high in the post-Halloween days. Personally, I’ve already been through the Holiday Classics playlist on Spotify three times, and it hasn’t even started to get old yet. Listening to Christmas music is a great way for celebrants to prepare themselves for the season.
Christmas music has also been seen to improve listeners’ happiness. Its sound activates the nucleus accumbens and cerebellum, two brain centers for emotional response. Our association of Christmas music with relaxation and celebration gives us a positive emotional reaction, and waiting until December to jam out to some “Winter Wonderland” shouldn’t be a requirement.
To be frank, we should not frown upon people who choose to embrace Christmas cheer a few weeks early. We should commend and encourage appreciation for the holiday season, the season of giving, in a time in which good deeds and selflessness are a much-appreciated rarity.
