As December rolls around and I see Christmas lights starting to pop up outside houses and in neighborhoods I start to contemplate when the best time to start decorating and preparing for Christmas really is. Coming from a family who is chronically late for pretty much everything we’ve always started decorating for Christmas in early December at the earliest, and I remember one year we didn’t get a tree up until about a week before. Some families I know start prepping for Christmas directly after Halloween and it makes me wonder when the best possible time to start decorating actually is.

Beginning of November?

No. This is a no for me. Completely skipping over the Thanksgiving holiday just doesn’t seem right to me. Sure there may not be any Thanksgiving music or not enough Thanksgiving movies, but there’s at least some fall decorations, even if not explicitly for Thanksgiving, that you can lay out. Just keep out your Halloween pumpkins or general fall decorations out until, at the very least, the end of this holiday.

After Thanksgiving or after the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade?

I am more okay with this option and it makes sense for one holiday to end and another to begin. Right after the Thanksgiving Parade even makes sense because Santa always shows up at the very end of it. So it definitely seems like a natural progression of events and a nice way to kick off the Christmas season. Even the day after Thanksgiving seems okay. It seems a little fast, but I would be okay with getting the house ready for decorations or listening to a couple of Christmas songs here and there before December hits.

December 1?

This one to me sounds the best. The start of a new month feels like the perfect time to begin a new holiday season. It gives you a nice set of 25 days of when the Christmas season starts, and this is also when things like advent calendars start too. Being able to start at the beginning of the month feels like the best choice for me personally and I feel, since Thanksgiving is out of the way, I can really focus on going full out Christmas.

I believe that the time to start preparing and decorating for Christmas is December 1, and although in my household that usually doesn’t happen, I have made it a personal goal to be able to decorate for Christmas sometime around the first week of December.