Fall holiday decorations should not be up until two weeks prior to the holiday, and they should only stay up, at the latest, one week after.
Don’t get the wrong idea, I am not going full Melania Trump on decorations or the holidays. I love the holidays. Fall is my favorite time of the year since Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas all land within this timespan. The weather becomes colder, people become a little nicer and it’s a time to be jolly and gluttonous.
And so, holiday decorations are welcome. They symbolize a shift into the new season, and they are a vital part of the holiday tradition.
However, decorating for Halloween in September feels unnecessary. It doesn’t get people in the mood for the holidays and it doesn’t make your house look much better. Likewise, I don’t need to see cornucopias flying about everywhere in the middle of October either.
Along these same lines, I especially don’t need to see a giant inflatable snowman on your lawn on Nov. 26 every year.
Most people, it seems, don’t need an entire month to get into the holiday mood. What does it even mean for someone to get into the holiday mood by decorating their house? Do they simply forget that it is fall, and constantly need a reminder of it every 2 hours when they look out their window? Are they afraid that they might forget Christmas or Hanukkah?
Putting up decorations so early overhypes you for the actual holiday, thereby diminishing the true excitement and value of the holiday. When the holiday finally comes, it feels as though you’ve already celebrated it.
The holiday becomes long, overdrawn and boring. Unnecessarily dragging out the length of a holiday can create a ripple effect, where leaving your old decorations up for too long makes you less excited for the next holiday coming up.
Two weeks before a holiday is the optimal time to decorate, because it provides enough forewarning to get families and neighbors excited. People get a more concentrated burst of holiday spirit, thus making the holiday more enjoyable and meaningful.
Leaving your decorations up for too long makes you and those around you weary of your house, so a one-week period after the holiday is a sufficient timeframe in which you can take down the decorations. All good things need to come to an end, so don’t live in a delusion. No matter how hard you try, your Christmas lights won’t make June 15 Christmas again, so take that junk down.
Holidays are a wonderful time, and decorations help make them that much better. But don’t overdo it. Make the holidays a bit more special by not forcing them to be longer than they need to be.