The definitive start and end to the Christmas season is a contentious and yearly debate. Adding fuel to the fire, stores start selling holiday paraphernalia well before Thanksgiving. And sometimes Christmas decorations aren’t removed until months into the new year.
Kris Rubinstein, a sophomore in the College of Communication and an employee at the Brew Cafe, is a Christmas enthusiast that keeps the holiday spirit going all winter long.
He often gets to choose the playlist that the Brew customers hear, and he said that when he played Christmas music over a month before the holiday, it got mixed reviews.
“I start listening to Mariah Carey, Michael Buble and all things Christmas around September,” he said.
Many people, like Jane Ertle, a sophomore in the College of Communication, think that Christmas decorations should wait until after Thanksgiving. Ertle said that her mom is very religious, and bases her decorating habits off of the Catholic Church’s calendar. Decorations go up after Thanksgiving and they are usually taken down after the feast of the Epiphany, usually about two weeks after Christmas.
“Our decorations are more traditional, rather than the generic Christmas stuff,” Ertle said. Advent wreaths and upwards of four Nativity scenes are placed all over their house.
Catholic students at Marquette University might be familiar with the schedule that the Ertle family adheres to, but the student body has a range of religious affiliations. The decorations in residence halls represent that.
Eliza Luvianos, a resident assistant in Schroeder Hall and junior in the College of Arts & Sciences, said that she and her fellow resident assistants work to decorate their wings in a way that promotes inclusivity of students’ varying beliefs.
“If someone doesn’t have the same faith-based values of the celebration of Jesus’ birth, we try to make the decorations diverse so everyone can come in and take part in the holiday spirit,” Luvianos said.
The resident assistants put up lights, snowflakes and other decorations after Thanksgiving and the decorations are taken down before break. However, some students put up their own decorations and these often stay up into the spring semester.
Those like Rubinstein do not have a definitive end to the holiday season. He continues to wear his favorite Christmas sweaters into the cold months of January, February and beyond.
“I don’t have too many options (for decorating) this year living in a dorm, but next year when I have an apartment there will definitely be a lot more,” Rubinstein said.
