The month of October has officially ended, and you know what that means: It’s Christmastime. Sure, there may be a few leaves left on the trees, and yes, there is a serious lack of snow on the ground, but that doesn’t stop the holiday spirit. Sprinkle some foam on the ground and ski with those super sad wheel skis. After all, it’s never too early to annoy your neighbors with Christmas carols and obnoxious light displays. In order to help Edina High School students get ready for the holidays, Zephyrus set out to create a to-do list. So grab your hot chocolate, candy canes, and disgusting but necessary eggnog, because it’s time to spread some holiday cheer.  

Step one: Put on some festive music

Who doesn’t love a good Christmas carol? Whether it be a slow ballad or an upbeat song, holiday music is always fun to listen to, even if your eardrums start to bleed as you listen to an old lady with vocal cord paralysis sing the same song over and over, with slightly different words. The Zephyrus staff chose a few of our favorite songs to play as we attempted to put together our to-do list. After about an hour of “White Christmas”, we decided it might be best to turn the music off, mostly because of the ear bleeding thing. Relieved at the silence, we unanimously decided to leave the holiday music for December, and move on to step two.

Step two: Find and wear the ugliest of Christmas sweaters  

When shopping for the infamous ugly Christmas sweater party, Zephyrus concluded that Ragstock was the best store to go to. There, we found numerous ugly sweaters, the kind where you start to sweat vigorously and the sweater starts to smell like it looks. Our favorite sweater styles included embroidered Santa’s, overly-decorated Christmas trees, and sweaters featuring creepy elves whose eyes follow anyone who’s unfortunate enough to glance at them. After all, a good Christmas sweater should make a passersby want to barf a little bit. After putting on our sweaters we ventured out into the autumn air, a welcome relief from our peculiar scent, and began on our way to fulfill step three. We got a few funny looks from people on the streets, but we chose to believe they were looks of jealousy and admiration at our foresight.   

Step three: Make a holiday Target (or Walmart, or CVS…) run

If you live in Minnesota, or in any state, really, you know that stores like Target, CVS, and Walmart have a tendency to be prepared for the holidays way too early. Thanksgiving doesn’t exist in the minds of those who wish to profit from holiday cheer, everyone knows that Christmas is the moneymaker. All the better for us as we continued our quest to fulfill our holiday checklist. Next up: do some holiday shopping. As we entered the local Target, we were greeted with a blinding display of ornaments, fake trees, and fake smiles. We split up and filled several carts with the necessities, such as the traditional awkward blow up santa to be placed on the roof to fool the children. After a four hour ordeal, during which whenever we knew where we were going employees were everywhere but once we had a question they all miraculously disappeared, Zephyrus finally left Target with everything we needed to spread some holiday cheer.  

Step four: Decorate  

After our Target run, Zephyrus staff met up to decorate for Christmas. We started by choosing the house: a brave staff writer volunteered, not realizing that their house would be the first on their street to be decorated, and that they’d be ostracized by the rest of the neighborhood for months. Yet, as we began to string up the lights, we decided that being the first to decorate wasn’t all bad. Many people would surely be getting their decorations up soon, and now they’d have a nice standard to try and live up to, although that’d be next to impossible. With this in mind, we happily continued on the step five.      

Step five: Wait for Christmas

We completed our holiday to-do list, and sat back to enjoy all the holiday spirit we sparked among those resentful neighbors and clueless children. There was only one problem: there was still a month before Christmas. Sure, we had gotten some weird looks when we stepped out in our Christmas sweaters, and yes, we may have already listened to as much Christmas music as we could handle, but it was worth it. We were ahead of the game. Now, it was time to start our countdown. With about a month left until Christmas, we had a lot of waiting to do, but that gives us enough time to nurse our ears back to health and experiment with which sweater induced the most bearable odor. Christmas, here we come.