Brock Sutter, Editor

An experience I’m sure everyone who has ever listened to a holiday playlist has had is this: finishing up a song, having a good time, and then silence… if only for but a brief second. For then, a familiar music box melody begins to play. And before you have time to react, before you have time to press the ‘skip’ button, the slow melisma, accompanied by bells, proceeds.

“I don’t want a lot for Christmas

There is just one thing I need

I don’t care about the presents

Underneath the Christmas tree…”

Indeed, this same dance has been repeated millions of times by millions of families across the world. Mariah Carey’s 1994 “All I Want For Christmas Is You” has become synonymous with the holiday season in the minds of almost every American. As the clock approaches midnight on October 31st, phones and TVs around the world are primed to begin the season of  Mariah Carey. 

Well, maybe not really. But as the Google Search Trend graphic below clearly shows, “All I Want For Christmas Is You” experiences a massive spike in popularity not even halfway through November, before Thanksgiving. And just after the New Year, it immediately falls off, seldom searched until the next November. If you look closely, you can see it beginning to spike up again, just days after Halloween at the time of publication. 

I like to call this the Mariah Carey Defrosting Effect, or MCDE. The popularity of the song (and Mariah Carey) almost seem like they are being cryogenically frozen on the New Year, to be revived immediately after Halloween. However, the MCDE is not an isolated event. Rather, it is a symptom of Christmas encroaching earlier and earlier upon the year, only being held back by a steadfast vanguard of seasoned Trick-O-Treaters. If we want to preserve the revered holiday traditions uniquely formed by our country, we need to push Christmas back and not defrost Mariah Carey until after Thanksgiving.

I consider myself to be a Christmas person. The holiday spirit, snow, red, gold and green… it all combines to create a festive experience unlike anything else in the world. So, you would think I would want there to be more Christmas time, right? Wrong. Because I also consider myself to be a Thanksgiving person. It’s a uniquely American tradition that transitions us smoothly from the spooky Halloween season into the joyful, merry Christmas holidays. Plus, like any other holiday, it comes with its own host of characteristics that make it worth observing. If the staple of Christmas is the gifts, then the staple of Thanksgiving is the feast. And with such heavy hitters as turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, and pumpkin pie, it’s hard to ignore the sheer potential of the Thanksgiving feast. A good Thanksgiving meal is hard to forget, and the time spent with friends and family is even more memorable. To skip over Thanksgiving for Christmas is to completely discard an important aspect of the holidays.

While it’s true that Thanksgiving doesn’t have as many memorable songs as Christmas, it’s also true that Thanksgiving deserves its own place in the holiday Hall of Fame. If for nothing else, it’s important to respect the holiday whose sole purpose in its creation was to bring our nation closer together. We can afford to give Thanksgiving a little time to breathe, and maybe Mariah Carey won’t have to perform again until the fourth Friday instead of the first day.