Rachel del Valle | The most wonderful time of the year?

This past Halloween, for the first time in my life, I didn’t wear a costume. There was a Spice Girls group costume planned for me and my roommates, but the logistics didn’t really work out. I had a paper due Thursday night, on the actual All Hallow’s Eve, and another one due Friday morning. So I dressed up as a procrastinator.

By Friday night, I was too tired to throw on cat ears or any similarly lazy costume. Instead I stayed in with a friend, drank some wine and watched TV.

At first, this made me sad in a nostalgic kind of way. But I’ve since realized that you have to choose which days matter to you, and sometimes those days happen to be Oct. 31 and Dec. 25. But not always.

Instead of the adrenaline that comes from the date on the calendar — candy on Halloween, presents on Christmas, Scrabble on Thanksgiving — I’ve come to appreciate the anticipation that comes with a given holiday. The buildup can be better than the event.

Now that it’s November, I can feel Yuletide cheer inching into my life. Christmas songs have begun to appear on my otherwise secular Spotify radio stations. “Holiday” themed sales and magazine articles are subconsciously making me want to squirrel away gifts. Have you been to Trader Joe’s lately? The entire place smells like ginger snaps.

I used to dislike the commercialization, the overeagerness surrounding the “Most Wonderful Time of the Year.” But now I see that maybe it’s not such a bad thing.

So instead of rolling my eyes in the middle of Rittenhouse Square this weekend when I heard the instrumental tinkling of “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas,” I went with it. I hummed along with the tune. I sniffed all the weird Angel Food Cake and Peppermint candles at Anthropologie. I decided to embrace the premature holiday spirit while I can.

Celebrations like Thanksgiving and Christmas and Hanukkah — and the breaks that come with them — are a good way to reset and relax. But any given Wednesday night can be as fun as New Year’s Eve given the right company.

There’s too much pressure to enjoy oneself on the particular dates of holidays. We forget that there’s nothing really special about them besides the people they bring together.

Holidays are relative. Some don’t mean anything to certain people, because of age, religion, nationality or relationship status. So I guess the only thing that really makes a given date more interesting than another is the attention paid to it. If stores and radio stations and magazines want to make me excited about the holiday season, I’m going to let it happen. I know that they’re just trying to sell me things. But so what?

Don’t get me wrong, I like decorations and food and family gatherings. But I think there’s some sense of enthusiasm lost on holidays as we age.

When you’re a kid, any sort of holiday comes with its own sense of excitement. No school! Maybe some costumes! Baked goods!

But for adults, there’s less fanfare and inherent joy that comes with a given observed date on the calendar. Instead, half of the pep comes from faking it. It’s kind of like how birthdays start to feel less and less special the older you get. It’s only once others start acting like it’s a big deal that you get jazzed about it too. So if commercial interests can fill the void of seasonal bliss, I welcome it.

I don’t mean to speak for everyone. I’m sure there’s plenty of folks who can summon the enthusiasm of a middle schooler come the holiday season. I envy them.

I’ve never really enjoyed Christmas itself that much — after about the age of 11 when I stopped asking for toys, opening presents became a parade of DVDs and books. I’m also not a big fan of ham or flan, the two big ticket items of Christmas Eve at the del Valle house.

But the atmosphere that comes with the days after Christmas, where I get to hang around the house in the matching pajama set my mom gifted me and my sister, and watch “Little Women” for the millionth time? I wouldn’t give that up for the world.

Rachel del Valle is a College senior from Newark, N.J. Her email address is rdel@sas.upenn.edu. Follow her @rachelsdelvalle. “Duly Noted” appears every Tuesday.

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