Following Halloween night each year, families gear up for upcoming Thanksgiving and Christmas festivities. For certain families, as soon as the clock hits 12:00 am on October 31st they break out the mistletoe and start playing All I Want for Christmas Is You by Mariah Carey. Even though Christmas starts 54 days after each November 1st, families should always start putting up their Christmas trees and decorations before thanksgiving.  

Retail stores set out Christmas supplies for sale as early as October often at the same time as Thanksgiving decorations. The Christmas decorations include Christmas trees, outdoor lights, ornaments and so much more. The Thanksgiving decorations on the other hand, only include ceramic pumpkins, cross-eyed turkeys and fake orange leaves to tack above doors. These decorations never stay in stores long due to the fast approach of the Christmas season, so that renders buying them useless. With this said, it makes more sense for families to start their preparations for Christmas as soon as November first.  

With the Thanksgiving holiday so late in November, this does not leave much time for decorating and getting into the Christmas spirit. If families wait until December to start decorating, that only leaves at most 25 days to set up for Christmas. When decorating for Christmas in November, families enjoy the decorations for longer, do not worry about setting up decorations before Christmas and do not go through the steps of taking down Halloween decorations then the extra thanksgiving decorations. 

“We put our [Christmas decorations up in November] because we love Christmas so we like [the decorations] to be up for a long time,” NC junior Sydney Ingram said.

People will say that families cannot put up Christmas decorations in November because Christmas decorations don’t belong in the month of another holiday. If people followed through with this mindset, they would immediately take down decorations for holidays the day after they ended. Since no one follows a strict setup and take down schedule like this, that leaves no reason for families to only set up their Christmas decorations in November.  

“I prefer to put up [Christmas] decorations early because I love to look at them. And if say, my [future] wife didn’t want to put them up early, I guess I wouldn’t care too much but I’d secretly hope to put them up,” NC freshman Tristan Roemer said.

While families can put up decorations whenever they want, families will benefit from setting up their Christmas tree and other decorations in November. So, break out the Christmas tree and start decorating!