Halloween has ended, and with it, the Christmas season has unofficially begun. On November 1, your social media is flooded with Christmas recipes and holiday whimsy, stores are filled with Christmas decor and trinkets, and you only have a few days to wait until the highly-anticipated Starbucks holiday menu hits shelves again. Although I am beyond excited to take my first sip of the Iced Sugar Cookie Latte this season, I can’t help but wonder if we’re moving a little too fast. It was just a week ago that I was stressing over my Halloween costume, desperately adding items to my Amazon Prime cart and anxiously checking delivery dates to make sure everything would arrive on time. And although there are still almost two months left until Christmas, I can’t help feeling like that time of year has already arrived.
The change of seasons invokes a different mental response within each of us. As seasons change, so do the temperature, daylight hours and often the way we go about living our lives. It is no secret that seasonal depression is a very real issue. For some, the thought of Christmastime is enough to pull them out of the dispiriting reality that the clocks have shifted back and the sun setting earlier always seems to cut the day short.
And don’t get me wrong — I love Christmas as much as the next girl, even to the point where I would consider it my favorite holiday. Despite temperatures not drastically changing in Florida, I still find myself wishing for the Christmas season on a dreary day filled with nothing but homework and studying.
With the shift to Christmastime, however, comes the heavy commercialization of the season. In today’s digital age, commercialization is not just about stores putting up their Christmas decorations in the middle of October to make a few extra sales, but it’s also about the constant flood of messaging we see on our phones. With every video we watch or trip to the store, we’re encouraged to buy more and engage with the season, or else feel like we’re falling behind. Influencers and retailers have turned our anticipation of the holidays into a marketing opportunity, profiting from our excitement before the season even begins.
The truth is it isn’t just about Christmas. We’re constantly told to romanticize our lives, as if happiness comes from treating our existence as something special, meaningful and exciting. Somewhere along the way, we’ve started associating this romanticization with never fully living in the present. Right now, it’s Christmas time. But after the last firework goes off on New Year’s and we’re expected to take on January, we’ll be reassured by the promise that summer is coming. And this isn’t just about the seasons. We’re always living a few steps ahead, convincing ourselves that happiness lies somewhere in the future. Whether it’s the next trip, graduation, a big move or a special date on the calendar, we’re never fully living in the present moment.
I often hear that it’s important to always have something to look forward to in life. And while I wholeheartedly agree with that sentiment, the problem arises when your existence becomes so wrapped up in the future that you lose sight of the present. When we’re always anticipating what comes next, we risk overlooking the ordinary moments that could eventually become our favorite memories.
To go back to Christmas, the consequences of not living in the present become especially clear on December 26. When you’ve been anticipating one day for months, it can be almost impossible for the actual experience to live up to everything you’ve imagined, no matter how many memories you make. You open TikTok on December 26 to see videos from everyone claiming that this year’s Christmas didn’t feel the way it was supposed to. And so the cycle begins again: you find something else to eagerly anticipate to get that feeling of excitement back.
There is truly nothing wrong with loving the Christmas season or getting excited about a future event. The danger is when this excitement comes at the cost of fast-forwarding through our lives. We only have one life, and it moves fast. One day, the ordinary moments we were so eager to rush through will be the very ones we wish we could get back. So, before you put up your Christmas tree and declare that Mariah Carey has officially defrosted, take a moment to appreciate November. Instead of counting down the days until what’s next, we should start making the days we have count.