Why I hate early decorations

“But as much as I love Christmas, I may love Thanksgiving even more,” says Baker Pitts. (Photo by Kevin Dooley used under Creative Commons License.)

By Baker Pitts, Staff Writer

Since when did it become acceptable to overlook Thanksgiving? You might be saying to yourself, ‘Baker, no one overlooks Thanksgiving!’ and you would be wrong!

The overlooking of the “big T” by putting up Christmas decorations before Thanksgiving has passed an all-time high as one of my biggest pet peeves and I’m going to use this printed megaphone and soapbox I have been given to tell you why.

My mother has always been the kind of person who loves to decorate the inside of our house for Christmas; everywhere you look you are face-to-face with an advent calendar, manger diorama or some other decoration. And I love it. I don’t want anyone reading this to think I hate Christmas. There is a distinct lack of green fur covering my body and my heart growing three sizes would probably kill me.

But as much as I love Christmas, I may love Thanksgiving even more. There’s just something about the gathering of family without the (slight) greed of getting presents, and with way more food than anyone could eat (if you’re doing it right) that just really gets me. But even that isn’t why I despise people putting up Christmas decorations before that Thanksgiving feast is finished.

The reason for my hatred of those early decorations is this: it’s basically the world ignoring an entire holiday. An entire holiday. Granted one based almost entirely on lies and the exploitation and eventual genocide of a native race, but it is still a holiday! People have spent many hours devising and creating decorations for your home for the Thanksgiving season, and you just go and head straight for the giant inflatable Santas and all the tinsel and movie-themed ornaments you can get your hands on!

Now, I really almost took this entire article on a tangent to explain the true history of Thanksgiving and the truth of how our country was formed, but even for an opinion article of mine, that is getting pretty off topic, so back to the matter at hand.

The fact that some people are so willing to do away with the accepted holiday timeline, which goes Halloween-All Saints Day-Thanksgiving-Christmas, is appalling to me. It’s as if your child has a bunch of activities they need to get to, and you just completely skip soccer practice so you can get them to a piano recital three hours early. It’s completely uncalled for and, personally, I need some time to ease my eyes into the bright Christmas colors from the dark black and oranges to the cornea-blinding greens and reds of Christmas. It’s like the world just wants me to be in a state of emotional holiday flux at the  year. UGH.