Picture this: It’s the first day of November. Yesterday was Halloween, but spirits have completely shifted. Around you, Christmas music blares from every speaker in sight, holiday movies take over all the cable channels, and stores begin to look like Santa threw up all over them. After the Halloween blizzard, it’s become winter now, regardless of what the winter solstice may actually say, and everybody is already celebrating.

Nov. 1 signifies the beginning of what may as well be the Christmas season, created by our society’s love of winter holidays. From the beginning of November until around Jan. 5, there’s a holiday haze in the air, infecting everybody with a sense of holiday cheer. No matter what holiday you may (or may not) celebrate, there is no vaccine for the American Christmas plague.

Before the ghosts of Halloween have even begun to dissipate, the evidence of the Christmas calamity hijacks every store in sight. Next to the bags of trick- or-treating candy and skeletons, boxes of red and green candy canes and dancing snowmen stand tall. Christmas trees, both real and fake, materialize in people’s homes. Parents, scrambling to satisfy their picky children with a myriad of gifts, maxing out their credit cards in a panic. Lines, stemming from toy stores, stretch all the way to the north pole. Under the facade of all the (somewhat strange) holiday movies and gift advertisements, the actual meaning of the holidays can be obscured by greedy companies looking to make a quick dollar off of desperate parents. Although there are a wide array of different kinds of holidays celebrated in the fall and winter months, the all-consuming celebration that is Christmas dominates. This begs the question: How early is too early to start celebrating?

The truth is, it doesn’t really matter when you start celebrating. Whether you completely deck the halls starting in early November, or you prefer to not celebrate at all, it all comes down to personal preference. However, this isn’t giving you a free pass to be a grinch–no matter how ridiculously early people may choose to start celebrating. If it makes them happy, then who would you be to tell them otherwise?

The line that separates the fall and winter holidays is nothing if not blurred. Although Thanksgiving is widely loved and celebrated throughout the United States, it doesn’t hold a candle to the influence of Christmas.

The two main culprits of why the holiday season begins so early are the snow and the cold weather. Considering that we do live in Grayslake, after all, there is never any shortage of the cold, snowy weather, meaning there is no shortage of holiday celebration, either. Given that the first real snow of 2019 was on Halloween, and the last snow probably won’t be until, say… June, we’ve got many months of feeling jolly ahead of us.

As companies continue to over-commercialize Christmas more and more every year, it’s important that we don’t lose sight of the real significance of the holidays. Although the meaning behind holidays can change and differ from person to person, when we usually think of holidays, it’s a time for us to spend time with those that we care for. No matter who it may be that you choose to spend your holidays with, whether you devote them to time with your family, friends, dogs, or decide to start a snowman dynasty, we should all value the time that we share with one another. As the curtains come to a close on 2019, we should take time to reflect on those in our lives that we love, whoever they may be.