It’s the age old question: How early is TOO early when it comes to Holiday festivities? Some stores start playing music right after Halloween, others wait until a week or two before Christmas. Some people just skip over fall and Thanksgiving and cut right to red and green. Some even dare to keep Christmas decor up year round! Any of these sound familiar?
Here at Muzique, we believe that Christmas celebrations can officially begin on December 1st. When working with children, especially those with special abilities, it can get confusing if you start to celebrate too early. Many people associate December with the holidays so by December 1st, there are Christmas lights up and trees and decorations all around, so bringing in some Holiday songs allows generalization and connections to be made outside of the music room or classroom.
At the school where I work, we do a Holiday Show every year around the second week of December. This means we have to go against my personal beliefs and start practicing right around Halloween in order to make the students “show-ready”. Although this advanced Holiday music is not my favorite because of how early we have to get started, the shows always come out fantastic and everyone has so much fun!
In regular music therapy sessions, we make sure to take our clients through each holiday with a song or two for some reality orientation and generalization to what’s going on around them. When I am working with a client in home during the holidays, I like to include the decorations in our session. Children with special abilities are often times put off by change, so I believe acknowledging those changes in a fun way can help to make the transition smoother.
I knew when I got to work today that the Christmas music would be blaring and the lights would be up! Everyone let’s their Christmas spirit shine on the 1st of December!
So we want to hear from you, how early is too early for you to pull out that Christmas music? Let us know what you think in the comments below!
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