You’re Decorating for Christmas Wrong
As you polish off the last of the leftover Thanksgiving turkey and stuffing, your thoughts are probably turning to the coming Christmas season and the mountain of gifts you’re about to buy. You’ve already begun stringing lights in the bitter cold, the Christmas tree is half-decorated in a corner, and you probably committed the heinous crime of humming “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas” while prepping the green beans nobody ate last Thursday. (READ MORE: Grateful for Thanksgiving)
This may sound a bit Grinch-like, but just hold the tinsel and evergreen for a minute. It’s not Christmas yet.
As the holidays descend upon us, it’s worth noting that there are three kinds of Christmas decorators — and most of them are doing it wrong. We have the Halloweeners, closely followed by the Thanksgivingers, and finally the Dawdlers.
If you are the kind of person who spends the four or five weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas gradually cracking open grey plastic bins of Christmas decor only to finally decorate the tree on Christmas Eve, you aren’t procrastinating; you’re doing it right.
The Early Birds
The earliest of the decorators are the Halloweeners — those who manage to have their trees up and aesthetically decked out well before their October pumpkins begin rotting on the front porch. We all know someone like this (it’s probably the neighbor across the street whose strobing outdoor decor has been disturbing your sleep for the past month).
To be fair, retailers are certainly encouraging that kind of behavior — looking at you, Hobby Lobby — by putting Christmas decor on sale absurdly early, with the result that Halloweeners get the distinct feeling they are actually late to the game.
The ultimate problem with the Halloweener approach to the holiday season is that it strips Christmas of its fundamentally religious nature. It turns November and December into a season of goodwill and sugar cookies culminating in New Year’s Day, after which the fake tree — which must be fake, since it had to be up for months — is de-robed and returned to its bag in the attic until next Halloween. (READ MORE: On Becoming Catholic)
Most Americans understand that Halloween is simply too early to begin celebrating the holidays, and they reserve their decorating exploits for Thanksgiving weekend. Instead of arguing about politics, they argue about the best way to string Christmas lights from the roof without breaking anyone’s neck.
The Thanksgivinger’s approach isn’t all bad. The long weekend after Thanksgiving does seem as though it might be the ideal time to take the plunge and spend three days decorating the home to have it finished in time for Dec. 1 — the kids and in-laws are usually home, and many hands make light work.
While Thanksgivingers certainly tend to celebrate Christmas as a religious holiday, by the time the day itself has come around, they’ve been celebrating the holidays for weeks. They won’t admit it, but they’re tired of hearing cheesy renditions of Jingle Bells and O Holy Night ad nauseum — and nobody can blame them.
Just Enjoy the Process
Christmas, as far as most of us are concerned, is the single biggest feast in the American holiday calendar. It’s a major affair that ultimately requires a lot of work to prepare for — work that the early birds to the holiday season tend to try to get through as quickly as possible. Past generations understood the necessity of spending time preparing for feast days, both from a spiritual perspective and from a physical one. The modern American wants to get there immediately.
Conveniently, Christmas comes with a built-in season of preparation called Advent — a season many Americans (particularly the more religiously minded) celebrate by lighting candles in a wreath and singing “O Come, O Come Emmanuel” around the dinner table. It’s a way of preparing minds and hearts for the Christmas season. What the Dawdlers have mastered — whether they realize it or not — is the process of making that preparation physical as well as spiritual. (READ MORE: A Consequential Moment for Humanity in Time and Space)
Man is a creature composed of flesh and spirit and, therefore, needs the physical to accompany the spiritual. If men were angels, the early bird approach would be fine; we could live surrounded by finished Christmas decor while spiritually preparing for Christmas. As it is, that’s actually quite a difficult thing to do. Decorating for Christmas is a process that we should take time to enjoy and meaningfully participate in. If you finally manage to spirit away the last of the empty storage boxes up to the attic on Christmas Eve night, you have a reason to celebrate — your home and (one hopes) your heart is finally ready for Christmas Day.
So, to all the people out there who are stressed about finishing up the Christmas decoration project they’ve started. Calm down. Enjoy the process. You don’t have to be ready for Christmas until Dec. 25 — after all, that’s when the Christmas season really begins.
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