The 25 Thesis
or Disputation on the Power and Efficacy of Delaying Christmas Indulgences
Got some hard hitting cultural criticism for you today.
To be clear, this essay is not to be confused with Martin Luther’s Ninety-five Theses, which is not itself to be confused with Jay-Z’s 99 Problems, which is not to be confused with Ice-T’s song 99 Problems.
Onto the real thing…
When it comes to boring corporate ice breakers—the questions you ask a big group of unfamiliar people—a few All Time Dumb Questions come to mind:
Are hot dogs tacos or sandwiches?
Which famous person, living or dead, would you have dinner with?
Who REALLY killed JFK?1
And of course, when can you start listening to Christmas music?
For years, I imagined this only as a problem for Disney adults who failed the marshmallow test. The indisputable answer is after Thanksgiving.
The inverse would be like listening to Halloween music before Labor Day. Why do it? People who need Christmas music in early November also lease sports cars.
I sound like a hater. I’m not! I actually love Christmas.
And this year I got the Christmas itch a little early—maybe a week ago. I brushed it off. Why have one marshmallow now when I can have weeks of marshmallows after Thanksgiving?
But then the itch returned. Again I ignored it, and again, it came right back.
The calendar provided no reassurance. This year, the Christmas season truly only starts on November 28, which means that the Christmas season lasts less than a month.
Now, I’m no Disney adult nor a Christmas sicko, but this simply does not feel like enough time.
The problem remains next year, when Thanksgiving only falls a day earlier, and only a day earlier still in 2027, only making the jump to 11/23 in 2028.
Less than a month to enjoy the 100 Gecs Christmas song? No.
That is, mathematically speaking, not even enough time to listen to the weeks worth of Christmas music Sufjan has created.
Dr. Dog’s Christmas EPs alone warrant a week.
So, at the risk of being branded an extremist and a child, I propose a new path forward, one that shakes the very foundation of everything you’ve been told:
You can start listening to Christmas music on November 25. One month of Christmastime.
Easy. Set in stone, in geostationary orbit above 12/25.
Christmas is of course, a pagan holiday co-opted2 by Christians to deal with seasonal depression. But if that means I can co-opt it right back to deal with my own seasonal depression along with some delightful indie covers? Hell yeah.
So… it’s November 25. Time to turn those speakers up and start spreading the cheer.
Ok this is actually a good one and I hope, dear reader, that you get asked it at your next corporate retreat.
Or if you’re The New Yorker—cööptëd