Last week while sitting in my car, I decided on a whim to check the radio station “40’s on 4” to see if they had started playing Christmas music yet. I knew it was probably too early, considering it was the beginning of November; however, when I turned the station on, the smooth voice of Bing Crosby greeted me and wished me a “White Christmas.” However, while driving to school on November 12th, singing along to bells that are supposed to ring in the holiday season, I wondered how long I could listen to Christmas music before I got sick of it.

This is the first year I’ve spotted the “Christmas Creep” (the name given to the creeping up holiday festivities), and I started to wonder why. After doing some research, I found out that in 2009, “40’s on 4”started playing its Christmas music, known as Holiday Traditions, on November 16^th. Between 2009 and this year, the date that Holiday Traditions starts has been moved up four days and ends six days later. The Pumpkin Spice Latte came out in late August at Starbucks way before pumpkins were even harvestable, Kmart started running Christmas-themed advertisements in September, and Black Friday is now Black Thursday and Friday as workers at many major retailers are forced to work Thanksgiving to maximize sales.

Economically, it makes sense to start early, even if it seems like manipulation to start your shopping earlier, too. This year is the latest Thanksgiving can possibly be, with the first day of November being a Friday. On top of that, Hanukkah is absurdly early, creating the hybrid holiday of Thanksgivukkah that has gotten retailers questioning whether they should have an even earlier Black Friday to let Jewish holiday shoppers get the same holiday sales as their Christmas-prepping counterparts. However, people seem to get really angry about the encroaching beginning of Christmas – as Kenan Thompson’s character Mr. Senior preaches on this week’s SNL, there’s supposed to be a holiday about giving thanks for what we have somewhere between the holiday of pretending to be things we’re not and the holiday of wanting things we don’t have. Plus, by starting so early, by the time Christmas actually rolls around it’s already been so over-saturated that people are excited for it to end.

As I pondered all these things while listening to a Christmas-themed 8tracks playlist and burning gingerbread and Christmas tree scented candles in my bedroom, I came to the conclusion that maybe I got so excited about an early Christmas because it represented everything I thought I was missing on non-holiday days. As a grumpy Jewish girl from South Florida, I immerse myself in holiday cheer and wallow happily in the fantasy of all the white Christmases I haven’t experienced. The pure, Americanized idea of Christmas is characterized by family togetherness, cold temperatures and warm environments, and a certain unexplainable magic – and honestly, I don’t see the big deal of starting to feel those things a little bit earlier. Plus, I can still drown out the naysayers with my Holiday Traditions until December 25th.