When does the "Christmas season" start?

I would say that Christmas season in Germany is pretty much defined by the start of the main Christmas markets. That is usually around four weeks before Christmas. This year, the Markets here in Munich stat November 27, so that’s the start of the Christmas season for me. While a lot of decorations and Christmas foods are available earlier (I can already buy Christmas cookies in my supermarket) fresh Christmas trees don’t tend to be available until the start of December.

Day after Thanksgiving. I don't think the US has been conditioned to believe that because holy crap people start to decorate right after Halloween.

We did have a few family friends back in the 90s that had a tree up before Thanksgiving because that is when everyone could be together or a service member would be home but couldn't for Christmas.

So they did Thanksgiving AND Christmas.

Honestly, it is when every you feel it starts.

We start to decorate week of Thanksgiving so I guess that is when it starts for us?

Also no thank you on summertime Christmas. I don't want to be sweating with the AC on and it be 100+° outside.

I have a neighbor with yard full of decorations and already lit up.

I put any decorations up after Thanksgiving, usually the first Saturday in December. That's soon enough I think.

Mid-November: When I have snow on the ground it’ll feels like Christmas season. I usually have snowstorms starting in September, but the snow melts away. Once it’s starts sticking, though…

I kind of lump Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years all together into “THE HOLIDAYS” as one big long slog. I could really tack Halloween onto the front end of that since a few weeks before that is when the chaos truly begins here. Halloween is and always has been a big deal because DH’s birthday is within a few days of Halloween. We usually go kind of big with decorating for that, homemade elaborate costumes that DD wants, all of which eats up a lot of time. From Halloween on, the whole rest of the year is nothing but a blur.

Last year I think we finally got our tree itself put up (no ornaments) around December 10th. Realizing I was going to have to take it all down again roughly three weeks later, I opted to only put limited ornaments on it the following week which kind of made DD sad, but not sad enough to actually HELP, so yeah. I did what I did and called it good enough. We did get her wooden Advent calendar out by December 2nd though, because chocolate, LOL. Even though she still has a huge bag of candy from Halloween that I’ll probably end up throwing half of away next Halloween.

I’m going to be honest and say that I actually kind of loathe holiday parties and get togethers. I hate attending them and I hate hosting them. If people have them we go because DH is a social butterfly who loves that stuff. But if I never had to go to another neighborhood Christmas party or his sister’s for New Year’s Eve I really wouldn’t miss it. For me that was one of the blessings of the Covid era, pretty much nobody was having any big holiday parties that I had to suck it up and go to or feel guilty for staying home. (His one anti-vaxxer friend that did have a big holiday party that year followed by big in person family gatherings for holiday meals ended up having multiple family members eventually die of Covid, so I’m not sorry we skipped that one.)

I genuinely like Christmas in general. I like getting and giving gifts. I like the baking. I like the decorations. I just don’t like that there’s really no buffer and it gets all lumped together at roughly the same time of year as Halloween, Thanksgiving and New Years. Christmas would be more awesome if it was in January or February or even March when winter seems to be dragging on endlessly.

I usually start decorating around the first of November. I put up my Halloween stuff as I get out the Christmas decorations but I haven't felt like it yet. I may have my sister help me get my tree out of the garage this weekend, and then decorate it when DS visits on the 30th. That way it will give some feeling of the season but not the full-on season quite yet.

Honestly, it depends on my mood and how my day/week/month/year went.  Sometimes I'm not in the holiday spirit until a few days into December, sometimes I'm ready the day after Halloween.  It truly depends, but we tend to wait until after Thanksgiving.

We used to wait a little further into December to kind of reset after Thanksgiving. But when we moved to an area where it snows we started putting decorations up Thanksgiving weekend if the weather is good. No fun decorating in a blizzard!

And littlemama - if you want gatherings with friends - plan one! I missed extended family gatherings when I moved out of state and started planning stuff with friends - open house, cookie decorating - come and bitch about your relatives.

For ME - Christmas season begins with Christmas Eve and ends with Epiphany (or maybe Candlemas). The time prior to Christmas is Advent - a time of preparation. It does start shortly after Thanksgiving - the Sunday after Thanksgiving is often the 1st Sunday of Advent (it isn't this year though, it's the following Sunday)

BUT I think from a secular perspective, Christmas starts with Santa bringing up the end of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade and the start of the holiday shopping season.

The actual Christmas season for me starts after Thanksgiving but if you walk in my house at the start of football season you’d think it had started then. I have a small football themed tree right down to purple lights, a team snow globe, a Santa in the team uniform along with all my other team related items. Those stay out until my team is done for the season. 

Right now my house looks like Santa’s workshop since I’m in charge of the club Christmas party. My dining room table is covered in centerpieces, the office is flooded with ribbon, bows, baskets and piles of things to go in them that we raffle off to benefit the local food bank and I’m still waiting on delivery of the individual gifts we’ll give to each member that attends.  I just hope I have the energy to decorate my own house after this party is over.

I am typically a Thanksgiving weekend Christmas decorator BUT this year ALL of my kids will be home for Thanksgiving.  Some of them won't be here for Christmas so I wanted the tree up so I could have their gifts ready and under the tree so we can have a mini-Christmas after our Thanksgiving meal.  I also wanted to enjoy the whole Thanksgiving weekend with DS & DIL who will be staying with us.  Didn't want to be dragging out the tree & decorations in the middle of their visit.  With my crazy retail season workload at work there is just no way to do it AFTER Thanksgiving weekend.  So up everything went this last weekend.  Just finished up final touches last night.  

for craft projects---August
for getting into the mindset---September
decorating---mid november

I’ll preface this by saying that I don’t celebrate Christmas. I have Nothing against it and enjoy the lights, feeling of goodwill, and all the secular, fun parts of it. I see the shows, go to the concerts, etc.

That said, IMHO the *Christmas Season* should start after Thanksgiving (or late November). This day after Halloween stuff gets on my last nerve. Two full months out of the twelve months of the year is just too much for me.