With Halloween over and Thanksgiving rapidly approaching, the holiday season is beginning to kick into full gear. However, despite still being almost two months away from Christmas, both radio stations and retail stores alike have already begun playing the iconic holiday hits of Mariah Carey, Bing Crosby, Michael Bublé and many more. With the countdown ticking and the yuletide carols ringing, the question being asked by many is when it is acceptable to begin listening to Christmas music.
When it comes to answering this question, five opinions stand out as the most popular.
The first is that Christmas music should begin being played after Halloween, spanning from Nov. 1 until Dec. 25. This seems to be the most popular opinion worldwide, as according to Spotify, “most countries see the first surge in listening around November 1.”
“I would say you can start listening to Christmas music after Halloween,” said Dakota Fowler, a freshman majoring in creative media. “November and December are very festive months, and Christmas music kind of amplifies the spirit of the holidays.”
However, according to Deseret News, the United States has largely excluded itself from the countries that start listening after Halloween, as a large portion of Americans tend to fall into the second of the five options: beginning to listen to Christmas music around the midpoint of November.
The 13th of the month, almost exactly two weeks after Halloween and before Thanksgiving, has been pinned as the most common date that Americans begin letting the bells jingle.
The third and perhaps most popular option is that Christmas music should begin being played after Thanksgiving. According to the Bustle survey, 52% believe that any time after Thanksgiving Day is acceptable, leaving almost exactly a month to crank the holiday tunes.
The fourth opinion is that the official start of December, the actual month of Christmas, is the starting point. According to a poll from Stylist, 64% of people say that Christmas music “should never be played” before the first day of December.
December is a reasonable time to assume as the start of the Christmas season, and with its start would logically come its music; however, the Christmas genre might be too varied and deep to be limited to only one month. This logic is backed by the Bustle survey, which found that only 9% of people thought that Dec. 1 was the appropriate start date.
The fifth opinion is undoubtedly the least popular — Christmas music as a whole should not be played in the first place. Surprisingly, those who subscribe to this idea have more tangible reasonings for what they believe. According to Kat Reinhert, a songwriting professor at the Berklee School of Music, there are multiple reasons that some people don’t believe in holiday tunes.
“We can’t escape it,” Reinhert said. “You walk into a store and it’s playing. You walk into your classroom and your teacher is playing it. You walk home and your mom’s got it on the radio, right? There’s some sort of oversaturation that [makes] it hard to get away from.”
On top of this, she believes that Christmas music can evoke certain negative emotions out of its listeners.
“For a lot of people, it’s triggering in a way, because all the music is happy,” Reinhart said. “If you’re not really feeling great about the holidays … Everything around you tells you that you’re supposed to be feeling this way.”
The various reasons for this argument put into context the reasoning behind all of these opinions — personal preference.
Some people love the music and therefore desire to listen to it for longer than just a month. For others, they may love the music just as much but have a sense of respect for their own self-made boundaries of the Christmas season. And for some, as Reinhert discussed, there is just a general opposition to the holiday jingles as a whole.
“This is an interesting question with no right or wrong answer,” said Charles Snead, director of the UA school of music. “Some of the most wonderful music we have in our culture is related to the Christmas season … although I think there would be common agreement that it is appropriate to a specific season. What defines the beginning or length of that season is a highly individual perspective.
No matter which of the five options you may fall into on the Christmas music spectrum, the answer to when holiday music should begin being played is clear — there is no answer. At the end of the day, Mariah Carey’s music is defrosted and ready to go, only a click of a button away from serenading the winter season. But when the button is clicked — or if it ever is clicked — is completely up to the listener.
