Everyone has that annoying friend that listens to Christmas music year round. But lately, that friend has become corporate America. Hallmark stores set ornaments on the shelf in July. Walmart displays their Christmas trees mid-September. Target sets out all of these things before Halloween. Why do we as a society feel the need to do this?

The original reasoning behind Black Friday begins with an old accounting custom. When businesses were still new and in debt, bookkeeping was done in red ink. When businesses finally started making money, they wrote in black ink. Black Friday was started as a day when stores would hold sales to attract customers and make enough money to be “in the black”. But it seems that in recent years, Black Friday has become a way for businesses to push the Christmas season before it’s necessary.

Some people may still consider this ideal since it is the day after Thanksgiving. However, Twitter seems to have decided that Christmas begins November 1st.

The minute Halloween ended, people began tweeting about the “first day of Christmas”, holiday shopping, and Mariah Carey’s hit song “All I Want for Christmas is You.” However, another side of Twitter has been bashing stores for setting out decorations before Labor Day.

This Christmas propaganda also seems to appear in stores earlier each year. Walmart set up its first Christmas display on August 28th of this past year,  two weeks earlier than last year. Taking into consideration the fact that this will get dramatically earlier as the years pass, and that stores will naturally want to outshine their competitors by setting up their Christmas displays even earlier, if this trend continues, fairly soon we’ll be seeing Christmas sales before back-to-school promotions.  

Christmas may be “the most wonderful time of the year,” but it’s simply unreasonable to celebrate the Christmas season before December. Christmas is already pushed enough during the weeks leading up to it, and adding a few extra months to that is enough to spoil the holiday.

The holidays start November 1st- or at least the holiday season does. That is when radio stations begin playing Mariah Carey’s Festive album, local cafés will start serving peppermint lattes, and best of all, holiday decorations will fill your favorite stores. For many, November is dedicated to the holiday of Thanksgiving- but for me, the cranberries, turkey, and pumpkin pies are being tossed from the fridge and replaced with eggnog, pecan pie, and peppermint mocha creamer.

I can’t help but mock the grinches who refuse to play Michael Bublé before Thanksgiving. The ba-hum-bug critics repeatedly express their hatred for holiday music before Thanksgiving, and maybe I’ll listen to them if they’d be willing to hand over some “thanksgiving music” that seems to be so apparent in their anti-holiday lives. My pop-culture influenced life, for the better or worst, will obey Sia and her “Everyday is Christmas” album.

Maybe dressing up as Santa for Halloween is a little too much; however, we can’t forget that Santa Claus shows up every Thanksgiving at the Macys parade. He is as stuffed as the Thanksgiving turkey and just as big of an attraction the blow-up Kermit the Frog, so why should we deny him the opportunity to be a part of the tradition?

The answer is that we shouldn’t. Instead, invite the jolly guy over through your speakers by playing “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town” as you get ready to do some Black Friday shopping. Maybe he’ll come early this year with some awesome deals so you can treat yourself.

You can expect to be on the naughty list this year if you tell me to stop playing holiday albums in November (and if I’m in the mood, any other month of the year for that matter.) I’ll also be happy to kick you off my roof if you protest the hanging of Christmas lights during the first week of November, the week in which we turn our clocks back an hour and the sun sets around five in the evening–so why not add some additional lighting?

Even though November has passed and we are now “officially” in the Holiday season this applies year-round, the holidays aren’t just a time of year- they’re an emotion, and if I’m every feeling “Christmassy” you can bet that I’ll be driving to work singing “Jingle Bells,” no matter the month.