Should you put your tree up before or after Thanksgiving? This is a question that most commonly arises each year during the month of November, which many people disagree on. In my opinion, the answer is yes. There are 3 reasons the tree should come up before Thanksgiving: First is timing, the second is the choice of tree, and the third is that it is beneficial to mental health.
The first reason why the Christmas tree should come up before Thanksgiving is timing. There is no real study on this; however, it is well known that Christmastime only lasts until the 25th of December. This means individuals who put their tree up after Thanksgiving have less than a month to enjoy the season and all it has to give.
San Marcos High School junior Reilly Spieker said, “Christmas is not just a holiday, it is a season. Putting the tree up before Thanksgiving doesn’t mean you are overlooking Thanksgiving; all it means is that you are ready to decorate and celebrate both,” she added, “celebrating Christmas and Thanksgiving at the same time means you have one more thing to be thankful for this season.”
The second reason the Christmas tree should come up before Thanksgiving is a wider variety of trees that buyers have to choose from.
According to Eyewitness News, “Despite personal strong-held convictions, anyone looking for the perfect Christmas tree should buy early: Experts said tree buyers should expect to pay between 10% and 30% more for both live trees and artificial trees this year, and also have a smaller selection to choose from.”
This means anyone who celebrates Christmas with a tree should purchase it early because if they choose to wait, it can lead to wasted money and a smaller selection of trees to choose from. Overall, it is an aesthetically and financially smarter idea to get the tree early.
The third and most important reason the Christmas tree should come up before Thanksgiving is improved mental health. Psychologists have said it is good for mental health to put up the tree early. This is for reasons like nostalgia, spiked dopamine, and the way friends, family, and neighbors perceive each other.
Psychologist Deborah Serani said in an interview with TODAY, a digital platform created for NBC TODAY, “It does create that neurological shift that can produce happiness. I think anything that takes us out of our normal habituation, the normal day in, day out … signals our senses, and then our senses measure if it’s pleasing or not,” she then added, “Christmas decorating will spike dopamine, a feel-good hormone”.
This illustrates how when we change our surroundings from what we see daily, it can spike our dopamine levels, which, according to Serani, is our “feel-good hormone.”
TODAY and happiness expert Elizabeth Lombardo said later on in an interview that Christmas decor can also improve mental health because it creates a sense of nostalgia that is paired with happy memories. “‘Start a new tradition,’ she told TODAY, ‘Whether it’s going away, seeing a movie as a family, or volunteering. It creates a new association.’ The next time the holidays roll around, you’ll subconsciously connect that time of the year with your newer, happier memories.”
This indicates that putting the tree up early is the right choice because it subconsciously connects the environment/decorations with the happy memories made while they are up.
Finally, Science Direct’s article titled “Inferences about homeowners’ sociability: Impact of Christmas decorations and other cues” conducted a study where participants rated homeowners based on photos of just their home’s front yard. “Stimulus homes had been preselected to represent the four cells of a two-by-two factorial design crossing the presence/absence of Christmas decorations with the resident’s self-rated social contact with neighbors (low/high).” which gave them the results. “As expected, a main effect for the decorated factor indicated that raters used Christmas decorations as a cue that the residents were friendly and cohesive. Decoration interacted with sociability in a complex but interpretable way. In the absence of Christmas decorations, raters accurately distinguished between the homes of sociable and nonsociable residents; in open-ended comments, they attributed their impressions to the relatively more ‘open’ and ‘lived-in’ look of the sociable residents’ homes.”
This demonstrates that putting up the tree before Thanksgiving is beneficial to the societal views that people have based on their surroundings. People often associate friendliness with Christmas decorations, so people who put them up before thanksgiving give others a positive outlook on their personality.
Overall, individuals who put their tree up before Thanksgiving will save money, improve their mental health during winter, and enjoy all of these positives as well as others, for longer than people who wait until after Thanksgiving. So, if anyone is debating whether they should put their tree up yet, the answer is always yes. There are too many positives to miss out on.
