Two weeks ago I was hanging out at some friends' apartment -- eating lunch, enjoying the Christmas decorations, having a good conversation, and... wait, what?! Did I just say Christmas decorations? More than a week before Halloween?
Yeah. I'm not making this up.
This (along with an idea from my friend kmech) made me think about the spectrum of different times of the year when people start putting up Christmas decorations. These are my thoughts, though because I don't have the media or graphics skills to make a visual in spectrum form, we'll have to settle with a list for now:
What your Christmas decor says about you
specifically, what the timing of your Christmas decor says about you
1a. No start date (i.e. year-round Christmas decorations)
- You really, really love Christmas, OR
- You're really, really lazy
- You hate Christmas, OR
- You're really, really lazy
2. Before Halloween
- You really, really love Christmas. Like, too much.
3. Between Halloween and Thanksgiving
- You love Christmas a lot, OR
- You like seasonal decorations a lot and realize that since turkeys and cornucopias are the only ones specific to November, you might as well skip straight to Christmas, OR
- You are a store trying to capitalize on America's greed in order to increase revenue
4. Between "Black Friday" and December 9
- You have a healthy, normal attitude toward Christmas, OR
- You don't care about Christmas but feel crushed by pressure to conform to cultural norms, including the one to put up lights and trees during the two weeks after Thanksgiving
5. Between December 10 and December 24
- Your procrastination slightly outweighs your Christmas spirit, OR
- You don't care much for Christmas, but have a personality that gives way to people's constant badgering to put up decorations
Scrooge------------ Where do you fall? -----------------Jolly
You can answer that question and/or just answer the one below and let the above (foolproof) spectrum/list say the rest
When do you put up your Christmas decorations?
Jon
My preference would be to decorate in the post-Thanksgiving/early December period so as to avoid overshadowing the other holidays or buying into consumer hype. The realities of my life - as a single girl with family far from home and ministry responsibilities in Baltimore - lead me away from my house for a three week window surrounding Christmas and New Year's. Decorating an empty house seems pointless. I do, however, help my parents decorate the week before Christmas because they're procrastinators.
ReplyDeleteI really like the Christmas tree graphic on this post. In an effort to discover how much time you spent looking for this specific graphic, I searched for it myself. First, I googled "Christmas tree" and did not find the image on the first page (which is actually 17 pages) of images. I then tried "Christmas decorations" with the same result. Finally, I googled "Christmas graphics" and there it was on the first page of images (actually, page 12 of 17). So unless your google is old school and only displays one real page at a time, I guess you didn't spend much time searching for it... Maybe a future post can be what this says about you as a blogger?
ReplyDelete@Chellee-- almost every search I do for images to put on this blog features the word "clipart". For this particular post it was "clipart Christmas". It comes up in the first page of images (page 2 of 18). Great comment; I'm glad you like the graphic!
ReplyDeleteCLIPART??? eww, Jon. please.
ReplyDeleteSo glad to see this idea form into another witty blog by Jon.
Kirstin's tangent says it all. I'll be gone a week before and after Christmas sooooo I'll probably draw a picture of a Christmas tree and stick it on my fridge. MAYBE also draw a picture of a stocking and adhere it to the fireplace...that might be nice.
HO HO HO!!
@Chellee: I'm dying..you're hilarious.
ReplyDeleteSame as Kirstin, I've never been in my own place for the window surrounding Christmas, so I never bothered in college aside from a string of lights and Christmas tree that's less than 2 feet tall. At home, my yearly plan is to go Black Friday shopping, get home around 8am, sleep till the afternoon, and then help my mom haul heaps of decorations out of the basement and watch her scurry around with them. So..as much as I LOVE Christmas, I think I'm too lazy to go to the trouble of decorating my apartment or home because I don't get to enjoy either quite enough.
fun fact: my grandma always talks about being a kid and their family getting the tree, doing all the decorating and all the baking on Christmas Eve. Not an ounce of effort was put into the holiday before then. So I wonder..did times just change due to commercialism or did people become more "jolly?"
I live a very rule-based life. If there are major intervening holidays between today and the holiday you are attempting to decorate for, then you are not allowed to decorate for it.
ReplyDelete"So what's a major holiday?"
I'm glad I pretended like you asked. Major holidays each have their own season, roughly delineated. They are:
- Valentines - permissible throughout Feb;
- St. Patrick's - through March, except if Easter falls in March, then halfway between 3/17 and Easter;
- Easter/general Spring - late March through April;
- Memorial/4th July/Labor Day comprise a giant celebration of 'Merica - fly your flags at literally at any time, but acceptable to be limited to May-early Sept;
- Int'l Talk Like a Pirate Day (9/19) - completes month of Sept;
- Halloween - October until 11/3
- National Sandwich Day - 11/3
- Thanksgiving/general Autumn - 11/3 to 12/6
- Christmas - 12/6 to 1/6
I wanted a graphic instead, but I'm lazy.
I feel personally attacked.
ReplyDelete