The pandemic Christmas boom

Football is almost a religion in America, which is why it was curious that, instead of airing the Baltimore Ravens playing the undefeated Pittsburgh Steelers in primetime on Wednesday night, NBC broadcast ... a tree.

Yes, it was the Rockefeller Christmas tree — a worse-for-wear Norway Spruce that had already endeared itself to Americans with its adorable, unexpected stowaway, a seven-inch-tall northern saw-whet owl that hitched a 170-mile ride in the boughs down from Oneonta. But NFL games typically bring in "millions more viewers than the tree lighting," CNN reports, even as Wednesday's unusual afternoon kickoff functionally served as the lead-in to what is, in effect, the ceremonial plugging-in of a Christmas tree.

The episode, though, is emblematic of the year as a whole: Christmas seems to be garnering unusually, even unnaturally, high levels of excitement in 2020. Everyone is hollier and jollier than normal. Christmas tree sales are way up; green and red decorations won't stay on the (virtual) shelves. And it's all thanks to the pandemic: While plans have had to change, for the holiday's celebrants, it has been one of the only dates on the calendar that the coronavirus can't utterly disrupt.

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Looking forward to something: Remember that? For most people, 2020 has been a parade of canceled plans, with nothing in the near-future to get excited about. Other — that is — than Christmas. While in previous autumns there'd been the routine bah humbug-ing about things like "Christmas creep," the holiday detractors have been conspicuously quiet this year. Even I, a staunch adherent to the belief that you need to wait until after Thanksgiving to put up Christmas decorations or listen to Christmas music, have been humming "Winter Wonderland" under my breath for weeks.

Christmas is not only the biggest holiday on the calendar for many Americans, but it is a time of year that feels generally festive too — even when actual festivities are canceled. "For a lot of us, Christmas is a magical time, it's a time of innocence, it's a time of joy," psychologist Deborah Serani told Today, adding that decorating can spike your dopamine levels (something surely all of us wouldn't mind right now). There's admittedly an element of compensation, too: "I won't see my extended family on December 25, and something about the loss of that tradition is making me go, uh … way too big," wrote Emma Specter in Vogue, adding: "My room is awash in Christmas lights, my Spotify playlist of carols has been blasting since midnight on Thanksgiving, I have an extra-large pink glitter wreath arriving on Wednesday, and I'm starting to question my sanity." It helps perhaps, also, that Christmas has always included a somewhat melancholy streak, with the wartime trope of being away from one's family already attached to the holiday.

Indeed, while many people wisely won't be traveling for the holidays this year, there's a cozy familiarity to decorating that is a comfort in a time of such turmoil. Some holiday store owners told Los Angeles' CBS affiliate that their sales are already "double, sometimes triple" what is normal. "I think the fact that sales are so significant so early in the holiday season is a sign of where consumers' minds are at," Jeanette Pavini, who runs a blog tracking consumer trends, told the station. "They want control. They can control their home by decorating." Likewise, Christmas tree sales are skyrocketing: "The last time we experienced sales like this, it really was at 9/11," Dimitri Gatanas, the owner at Urban Garden Center in Harlem, told the New York CBS affiliate. "We found that when people are down, this uplifts them in a lot of ways."

Sure, part of that might be due to the fact that people who don't normally decorate their homes are doing so this year because they aren't traveling to a relatives' for the season, like normal. But it's more than that: Christmas has been a comfort for people throughout the whole pandemic. Back in March, in the unstable, uncertain early days of the outbreak, unseasonal Christmas light displays became a small, makeshift way to brighten spirits. The Hallmark Channel took the first weekend of spring to air holiday movies, tweeting "we agree that we all need a little Christmas now." Some radio stations even started playing Christmas music 10 months early, citing the uplifting effect it has on people: "We're all trying to figure out what we can do, and we hope that playing KEZ Christmas Music on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday helps in some way," one Phoenix-based station explained.

By summer, the Christmas cheer was bursting, and holiday inspo took over TikTok as well, with everything from festive compilations to out-of-season winter tips popping up in users' videos. "The virus has ripped away so many things from us this year," 20-year-old TikToker Hannah Smith told The New York Times. "Having this little nostalgic spark of excitement for something that has been consistent for so many of our lives just feels comforting to look forward to extra early." By November, even one of the Home Depot 12-foot Halloween skeletons in my neighborhood had been redecorated with red tinsel and a Santa Claus scarf.

Though it's fair to bemoan the consumerist undertones of Christmas, what's especially remarkable is that the celebrations this year seem divorced from the usual excessive spending, once you get beyond the purchases of holiday decor. Shoppers actually spent less over Black Friday than usual, almost certainly a consequence of the pandemic. Rather, Christmas cheer — for the sake of the cheer part — is what people are latching onto.

The NFL is better for ad sales, yes. But when it comes to 2020, NBC made the right call: The magic of Christmastime is a much-needed balm for the pandemic-weary soul.