The Christmas season or the festive season (also known in some countries
as the holiday season or the holidays) is an annually recurring
period recognized in many Western and other countries that is
generally considered to run from late November
to early January.
In Western Christianity, the Christmas season is synonymous with
Christmastide,[4][5] which runs from December 25 (Christmas Day) to
January 5 (Twelfth Night or Epiphany Eve), popularly known as the
12 Days of Christmas, or in the Catholic Church, until the Baptism
of the Lord, a Christmas season which can last for more or fewer
than twelve days.[6][4] As the economic impact involving the
anticipatory lead-up to Christmas Day grew in America and Europe
into the 19th and 20th centuries, the term "Christmas season" began
to also encompass the liturgical Advent season,[7] the period observed
in Western Christianity from the fourth Sunday before Christmas Day
until Christmas Eve. The term "Advent calendar" continues to be
widely known in Western parlance as a term referring to a countdown
to Christmas Day from the beginning of December, although in retail the countdown to Christmas usually begins at the end of the summer season, and the beginning of September.
Beginning in the mid-20th century, as the Christian-associated
Christmas holiday and liturgical season, in some circles, became
increasingly commercialized and central to American economics and
culture while religio-multicultural sensitivity rose, generic references
to the season that omitted the word "Christmas" became more common
in the corporate and public sphere of the United States,[8] which
has caused a semantics controversy[9] that continues to the present.
By the late 20th century, the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah and the new
African American cultural holiday of Kwanzaa began to be considered
in the U.S. as being part of the "holiday season", a term that as of
2013 had become equally or more prevalent than "Christmas season" in U.S.
sources to refer to the end-of-the-year festive period.[8][10][11] "Holiday
season" has also spread in varying degrees to Canada;[12] however, in
the United Kingdom and Ireland, the phrase "holiday season" is
not widely synonymous with the Christmas–New Year period, and is
often instead associated with summer holidays.
