Today is the eleventh day of Christmas. Christmas starts, traditionally, at sunset on Christmas Eve, you see. Most of us don’t think of it that way. A lot of people in the U.S., myself included, tend to think of the start of Christmas Season as beginning the day after Thanksgiving. So by the time Christmas Day arrives, we’ve been decorating and celebrating for at least four weeks.

So I understand why some people are tired of it all by Boxing Day.

It feels like people are more impatient to end it than they used to be, and a friend had an interesting theory about that…

I didn’t grow up in the kind of church that makes a distinction between the Advent and Christmas seasons. The various flavors of fundamentalist Baptist churches we attended had almost a phobia of anything that might possibly hint at ritualism or hierarchical authority. Iconography was such a no-no that, not only didn’t we ever have a cross with the body of Jesus shown, but manger scenes at Christmas weren’t allowed inside the main sanctuary unless the kids were actually acting out the Christmas story as part of a service (and some churches insisted even those should happen in other rooms if the church had one big enough for the audience). Oh, we would have fancy lit up manger scenes set up in front of the church during December, but not inside the sanctuary.

So growing up I didn’t differentiate between Advent Season and Christmas Season. Once we were past Thanksgiving, it was Christmas time.

Some of the neighbors would start taking down Christmas decorations the day after Christmas, but it was a very small number. A few more would begin a few days after. Most people seemed the leave up their home decorations until New Year’s Day. That was the day when everyone was outside turning off lights, chopping up the trees, and or piling them up for a bonfire.

Now, lots of people I know start taking everything down right away. And I have heard more than a few comments expressing shock or disapproval that other people have some decorations still up on New Year’s Eve.

My friend blames the retail stores insisting on putting out Christmas stuff earlier and earlier, creating a kind of Christmas Fatigue. It annoys me when I see Christmas stuff popping up in stores near the end of August, now. I mean, I understand why craft stores have Christmas things early—if a person is making their own Christmas decorations and such, they have to start work some time before the decorating season begins.

I have to admit that as soon as I see them in stores, I can’t help but take a look. My excuse is that we frequently have a theme for our tree, and some of them are harder to do than others. Because of a pair of decorations I was given as presents a year or two ago (one is a festively painted martini glass, the other is my Great-grandmother’s plastic Santa’s sleigh with reindeer), I’ve been working on a kitschy Cocktail Christmas theme, and it’s been taking a while to find ornaments that work for that.

I feel guilty if I find a set of ornaments I feel compelled to buy that early, because it simply validates the decision made somewhere way up stream from the people working in the store to keep moving the season earlier and earlier.

But I refuse to let them ruin my Christmas. My tree goes up sometime after Thanksgiving. And it stays up at a minimum until New Year’s Day, but most often, like this year, it’s staying up until Epiphany. So, all Twelve Days of Christmas.

I am not letting them redefine my holiday!