Just curious: When does the Christmas season start and end for you? I’m not talking about when the merchants start trying to sell it, but when you personally feel it is appropriate to start decorating and celebrating. Assume for the poll that we’re talking about an ideal year where you’re as into the holiday as you get and you have the time and resources to celebrate. If your exact answer isn’t there, please check the closest one and specify in the thread.
Starts the Friday/weekend after Thanksgiving, ends on January 2.
Just for clarity, I was going for the general cultural celebration, though feel free to define Christmas as you see fit. I’m aware that my range of dates excludes Orthodox Christmas, but I didn’t get back to the OP in time to clarify that.
I’m one of those annoying, happy Christmas people. For me, the season begins the day after Halloween and ends on Epiphany.
I said a week before because that’s about the time I go home to see the family.
When we get home from my husband’s family’s Thanksgiving it starts–and that’s usually Sunday. I address cards first, the decorate the tree as soon as it’s actually December.
I’m emotionally done with Christmas on December 26 and used to take the tree down before New Year to start with a clean slate. My husband changed that though; he wants the tree to stay up through New Year.
In my perfect world December would be spent making gifts for your loved ones, the tree would go up on Christmas Eve, and all the merriment including parties and television specials would happen in the twelve days of Christmas. It would all go down on January 6.
I refuse to think about Christmas (other than when it’s forced upon me) more than two weeks before 12/25. No tree, no shopping, no lights on the home. Then, of course, everything must be gone by New years. It’s a fucking one day Holiday, can we make the “celebration” of it last less than one twelfth of the entire year?
I like to be liturgically correct. Christmas begins at sunset on December 24th, and ends at sunset on January 5th.
Um no, it’s a twelve-day holiday. For once the song got it right.
I picked the day after American Thanksgiving, but there’s an option missing in your poll.
The option I really wanted was the First Sunday of Advent–which this year is December 2nd, but is often the Sunday after American Thanksgiving.
Actually, this year, starting on the first Sunday of Advent makes for kinda of a short Christmas season, but since I get so much involuntary Early Christmas stuff . . .
it’s ok.
Between working retail, singing in a choir and playing handbells, knitting Christmas presents . . .
I was speaking of the secular “official” holiday. If religious people want to knock themselves out, fine with me.
We aren’t religious, but we carry the First Sunday of Advent through Epiphany schedule too. Tradition, I guess.
Kind of depends on how you define celebrate.
We don’t decorate the house until a couple weeks before Christmas and it’s all down within a week of Jan 6th, but due to everyone’s insane schedules if we want to get together with friends at this time of year for any Christmas activities it’s whatever we can arrange.
Our girls Christmas shopping day was in October this year, I’ve already had 2 “Christmas” lunches at work and have 2 more scheduled over the next 2 weeks and I think their reasons for moving them up are perfectly valid. They want everyone eligible to be able to come and with vacations and end of year deadlines December is a horrible month to get a group of people available at the same time.
Advent starts getting celebrated Dec 1 with the Advent calendar, even if it hasn’t officially started. But even though it’s still Advent, when I do decorate it’s maybe a week or ten days before Dec 25. Ends with Epiphany.
I try my best not to get dragged in to this cursed holiday.
The Christmas “season” is not the holiday itself, in my opinion. That really is just Christmas day, with maybe throwing in Christmas Eve and Christmas Eve day.
But the season is the point when it’s okay to have decorations out, and to be really planning Christmas things. It’s the point where it’s okay to play that Christmas music you’ve been rehearsing out in public. And, to me, that starts right after Thanksgiving (not before, so I didn’t vote for that), and ends for Christmas carols around January 6 or so, and lasts even longer for Christmas decorations, where you aren’t odd unless you have them out past Valentines Day.
Another answer I almost went with was the public school Christmas vacation, which starts with December 22 and ends January 3, give or take a few days depending on the year. That’s when the celebration started for me as a child. You can’t have a celebration if you’re stuck at school.