By Sophie Bright
Editorial Editor
“It’s the most wonderful time of the year!” but is it really this year? 2020’s holiday season seemed to get an earlier start than normal. In previous years, most people started to get in the Christmas spirit in the days following Thanksgiving.
For me, I was unbothered. Celebrating Christmas has always been a way to feel happy and celebrate with friends and family. Celebrating holidays such as Hanukkah and Christmas, which my family both celebrate, has never been a nuisance, it has always been something happy for all of us. So the fact that everyone is celebrating it earlier, makes me feel like it’s not so depressing what’s going on with the world.
This sudden change in celebrating earlier might be due to the fact that COVID-19 is still at large and this is a season where most people want to be festive and spend time with families doing fun traditions, but sadly, we cannot go out and spend time with the ones we love most. This is causing people to spend most of their time at home which gives them many opportunities to surround themselves with festive decorations and spend time listening to their favorite holiday jams.
Stores started selling holiday merchandise in October and people bought most of the decorations up before December even started. The weekend of the 5th, I went Christmas shopping for all new decorations and to my surprise almost every festive item was sold out or for display only. This works out great for the people who bought up all of the decorations because they’ll get to surround themselves in festiveness, but for those of us who didn’t get their christmas shopping done earlier, we don’t have as many options to choose from.
Radio stations that play holiday music all season long typically start the broadcast of those songs in the days after Thanksgiving. However, this year, they had already started playing festive music well before the week of Thanksgiving.
“To be completely honest, I’m quite happy that people are starting to celebrate Christmas early this year for a few reasons.” said QUEST freshman Sofia Arzola, “Christmas has always been my favorite holiday of the year, and I think we all just kind of want this year to be over so I think in a way it’s almost like once we get past Christmas, New Years will come and the year will finally be over.”
Other people this year are decorating their houses to the extreme. Many people have put on light shows in front of their houses for the public to enjoy from the safety of their cars as they pass by.
No matter what your holidays look like this year, we wish you to stay safe for the holidays and have a happy New Year. Hopefully next year is better.
