Is It Christmas Yet?

Every year, on Dec. 1, I kick off the holidays by listening to my favourite Christmas record, The McGarrigle Christmas Hour. Released in 2005, this deeply Canadian album features seasonal music recorded by legendary folk duo Kate & Anna McGarrigle. The album also includes music by their family — most notably Kate’s children, Rufus and Martha Wainwright — and close friends like Beth Orton, Teddy Thompson and Emmylou Harris. The hour’s 14 tracks run the usual gamut: traditional carols in English and French, some original songs and a handful of classic pop standards.

But The McGarrigle Christmas Hour is more than its music. To me, it’s the feeling of spending the season with somebody’s family, invited, included and gathered around the piano. As someone who’s spent several Christmases lonely, I cherish an album that treats the despair I confront each December. It makes me feel better.

I’m sure this is worth bringing up to my therapist, but I don’t think it’s all that unusual. Christmas is all about strategies for coping with depression. It is, I dare say, the real reason for the season: a string of lights to neutralize the darkness; an oven full of gingerbread to heat the home, to eat, to warm the heart; a reason to look forward to a month without the sun and come together in an isolating time. Christmas cheer is meant to cheer you up.

Some years, the urge to pop by the McGarrigle place comes on stronger than others. This year is like that. Usually, November is for sad-sack singer-songwriters: Laura Marling, Phosphorescent, Moses Sumney, Sufjan Stevens. In 2024, the only Sufjan that I crave is Songs for Christmas. Failing that, Phil Spector and the Ronettes’ Christmas Gift for You or Hawksley Workman’s Almost a Full Moon. I want my Christmas favourites right away.

All month, I’ve been standing on principle, practising patience, for fear that the magic might somehow be lessened by changing the rules of engagement. I’m still holding out till the 1st of December. But lately, I find myself wondering why. Nobody else is.

‘It’s time!’

The stores never do. In Canada, Christmas displays go up everywhere after Remembrance Day. South of the border, the time to launch the Christmas displays is during American Thanksgiving, and either way, people are bound to complain about holiday creep for a few weeks before they give in.

There’s an unwritten rule that we wait for the 1st of December. Typically, people abide by that rule. According to etiquette experts, it’s common to put up your tree in November, and they don’t mean commonly done — they mean gauche.

This Christmas, it’s the other kind of common. This year, it felt like some friends were ahead of the retailers, nearly as keen to transition from Halloween straight into Christmas as Mariah “the Christmas Queen” Carey.

There’s no shortage of evidence. Inflatable Santas are already everywhere. LED lighting is already hung from the eaves of East Van. Walking by, you can see that the trees are already inside and the halls have been decked through the window.

Last weekend, my family attended a dinner that turned out to be the year’s first Christmas party, soundtracked by Booker T. & The M.G.’s In the Christmas Spirit, an under-heralded holiday classic.

Few are committed to keeping the music of Christmas at bay. Dozens of holiday songs saw their streaming increase by 1,000 per cent the first week of November. The Christmas Hits playlist became Spotify’s No. 1 playlist around the same time. Spotify responded by dropping its Holiday Collection a month early.

Locally, Vancouver radio station 104.3 the Breeze transitioned to Christmas songs, 24-7, on Nov. 13.

If you’re looking for your soft-to-mid-tempo hits of the ’80s and ’90s, you’ll have to look elsewhere until further notice. Right now, it’s nothing but “feel-good Christmas favourites.”

Clearly, people need to feel good right away.

Do progressives need this more than others?

I’m not the only journalist to notice. Not long after pitching this essay, then cheekily titled “Screw It, It’s Christmas Now,” a piece with the same thoughts, right down to the short and sweet headline, sprung up at Vox.

Outrageous. Now I have to call this essay something else.

According to Rebecca Jennings, the writer who beat me, the national mood in America looks to be desperately festive. In normal years, Jennings observes, America’s right wing is the primary source of the pro-Christmas agenda.

“This year, for the first time in recent memory, perhaps it’s the left who’s more fervently embracing the holiday,” she wrote.

I’m sure you can imagine why. Little felt right about 2024. There are horrors unfolding all over the world that our leaders seem to lack the will to stop. Genocides, unprecedented weather events, a global pandemic that never quite ended.

We’re all broke, we’re all a bit heartbroken, and Donald Trump just got elected on a promise to make everything worse. Canada seems to be headed in a similar direction. There’s more bad stuff. Who can keep track anymore? It all feels so out of control.

At this point, there’s about one thing we can control. And that’s whether it’s Christmas next month or right now.

That’s what it’s really about. Some control. Researchers consistently find that consumption is a means to take control of what little we can.

When problems get too big, we buy household cleaners and solve household problems instead.

If we can’t change the world, we change the world inside our homes.

Christmas is perfect for that. Decoration and reorganization reduce stress. Same goes for sugary snacks, or a big glass of eggnog and rum. At Christmas, we look back on happier times and lean into long-held traditions. It’s a way to make the darkest days and darkest timeline bearable.

So I’m already on top of my holiday shopping. That’s a first. In normal years, I tend to be the guy you notice sprinting through the mall at closing time on Christmas Eve. This year, I’m ahead of the game. I’ve been stockpiling presents for weeks.

Researchers might call it “retail therapy,” or even “impulse spending,” and I simply disagree. It’s not impulse spending, you see, if it’s Christmas.

So I say it’s Christmas, and this Christmas, I’ve got it under control.

Siri, play The McGarrigle Christmas Hour.