By Elena Schmidt, Staff Reporter
I, as many others, love Christmas. Walking through the mall and gazing at the decorations, buying or setting up a tree and turning on all the Christmas lights, the holiday spirit is better than ever (especially when it snows in December!).
I often hear people complaining at Thanksgiving that Christmas music is playing too early, and that others try too hard to get into the spirit too soon. Personally, though early holiday excitement doesn’t bother me much, I like to wait until after Thanksgiving to wear my Christmas sweaters.
However, especially this year, I was stunned that stores had Christmas decorations out before November even started. In fact, I went shopping the day before Halloween to find things for trick-or-treaters, and all Halloween supplies were replaced by Christmas things in certain stores. Keep in mind that this was on Oct. 30th.
What about Thanksgiving?
I asked around why that is. Danielle Inman, a manager at Five Below, explained that the Halloween supplies were replaced several days before Halloween, since there was a deadline to meet.
“We started putting out (Christmas) stuff little by little, but we had to have (it) out by November first,” Inman said.
The reason for all these holiday supplies was to have enough for large crowds of shoppers, and especially to minimize chaos around the holidays. Inman mentioned how a lot goes on around Nov. 1, and that the decorations come out along with the Christmas music.
Even she had mixed feelings about such early Christmas spirit.
“I feel like we didn’t have time to celebrate each holiday. I mean, we barely had anything for Thanksgiving, but we had plenty of stuff for Christmas,” Inman said.
Though Christmas is an exciting holiday, Thanksgiving is also wonderful and deserves some more appreciation. I find it ironic that Thanksgiving is overlooked, since it is a time of giving back and being grateful- yet we move on before it has even started.
Maybe we can keep that in mind for next year. For now, Merry Christmas!
Elena Schmidt can be reached at [email protected]
