After last week’s presidential election, something unusual started happening in my neighborhood: Walking into a wine bar on November 11, I saw piles lined with pine wreaths next to skeletons and spider webs, remnants of Halloween just a week and a half earlier. Someone had planted two life-size nuts on their front porch; Someone else’s brownstone windows peered into their living room, where a fully lit Christmas tree was already glowing inside.
But according to people around the country, it’s not just my neighborhood. The early start of the most festive season seemed to be a reaction to — what else — the election results, which plunged many Americans into an unusual mood they haven’t experienced since Donald Trump was last elected in 2016. Or, as Massachusetts social worker Dylan Baker put it: “Holiday lights because my daughter has no sex rights.”
Baker started putting up Christmas decorations on November 6th. Rachel Kay Albers, a marketing professional in Chicago, told me she “just bought a 10-foot tree, not even on sale,” with the philosophy, “It’s time to shake it up.” Rachel Lewis, a social media manager in North Carolina, built an inflatable penguin on her roof the same week. “Our neighbor said, ‘No hurry?’ And we said ‘No, it’s not.’
Like a lot Interest in comprehensive skincare routines has exploded In the wake of Trump’s 2016 election, Americans seem to be transforming their anxiety into holiday cheer, only by sheer force. It’s not exactly a mystery why: In uncertain times, we seek escape and solace, and nothing occupies a cozier or more nostalgic place in the American imagination than Christmas. Couple that with a late Thanksgiving, and people are seeing little point in waiting for the Türkiye to put up their tree.
For some, Christmas came before the polls closed. Mia Moran, a children’s book editor in Queens, said she went shopping for Christmas pillows at Target in early November. “This year it felt like we needed something,” she tells me. “[Christmas] A good outlet, and a neutral feeling of pure joy. It is not charged in any way.”
It’s ironic, considering Decades-long right-wing mania About the supposed “war on Christmas” by media organizations. This year, for the first time in recent memory, perhaps it’s the left who is embracing the holiday with more enthusiasm “When the polls are over in your state, you’re officially allowed to start playing Christmas music,” Tweet First Amendment lawyer Adam Steinbaugh on election night. Comedian Mike Drucker after it became clear that Trump was winning has been posted“I’m listening to Christmas music starting tomorrow because this crap is being said.”
According to The Wall Street JournalInvoking the holiday spirit is a “healthy response” to election stress, which is “sitting there and going, ‘Oh my God, this is an existential threat to the world and I’m going to enter a doom and gloom loop,'” explained Kevin Smith, Nebraska- Professor of Political Science at the University of Lincoln.
It’s also entirely possible that it’s not just the election that’s caused this year’s bout of “Christmas creep,” a term that’s been discussed and debated since the 1980s. The phenomenon itself has existed for much longer, however: early Christmas sales (and complaints about them) can Dating back to the Victorian era. It’s common for businesses to use remote holidays as a marketing tool to annoy customers. Less common is that for Americans seemingly all agree, individually, the time for twinkle lights is now.
this year, Per AxiosRetail experts say holiday deals are picking up in part because there are five fewer days between Black Friday and Christmas this year and in part because of election uncertainty. For example, Lowe’s launched its holiday decor line in July, a month earlier than the previous year, while Amazon moved its Prime Day to early October.
America’s favorite coping mechanism has always been buying stuff, and if the cost of Christmas is any indication, we’ve been steadily getting more anxious over the years. The National Retail Federation expects the average consumer to spend $902 on Christmas gifts and decorations, up $25 from last year. Business Insider reported. Prophecy Market Insights projects that the Christmas decoration industry will nearly double over the next decade, from $8.45 billion in 2024 to $13 billion in 2034.
Charles Sheland, a professional modern dancer in Manhattan, said that in addition to putting up his tree, string lights and nutcracker figurines, he’s already started pulling his favorite Christmas music to teach in his dance classes. He says part of that is due to the shock and dismay of what began as a galvanizing Democratic campaign. “I really think that the joy of Harris’ campaign and the optimism of that movement excited people, and for it to be so deafening, people just wanted to have some of that joy,” he says.
There’s another reason to skip Christmas from Halloween, he says. “Thanksgiving is a difficult holiday because it’s often celebrated with extended family and sometimes we don’t agree with our extended family. So instead of being strategic about the holiday, we’re just jumping to the next one.”
Since 2020, holidays, and to a greater extent, seasons have become celebrations online, not just IRL in the form of decorations and activities. People started documenting them on TikTok and Instagram.”Winter Arcs,” as a way to mark their “Meg Ryan Falls” and their Hot Girl summers, when it seemed the only way to feel alive was to watch someone else’s life through a screen. As I did Argued beforeDividing your life into seasons and leaning heavily on a seasonal aesthetic is a way to romanticize your life and detach from it, a potentially useful tool when nothing seems to make sense.
I’m not immune either. After my unexpectedly festive neighborhood walk, two wines deep, I decided I needed to make a reservation at one of those bars in Manhattan where they decked it out with festive decorations for the month of December. For the most part, these are miserable establishments — the kind of bars that are overpriced and crowded, places marketed on the promise of exoticism and communal fun but mostly existing as tourist photo traps. But in that moment, surrounded by a million twinkling wreaths and giant red bows and weary holiday shoppers from New Jersey, it didn’t seem like the worst place to be. In fact, I can think of worse things: a declining democracy, or a man under investigation for sex crimes installed as attorney general, for example. So screw it, it’s Christmas now. May we all find joy wherever we can.
