I start listening to Christmas music in July, a song here or there if I'm really in the mood. By October, I check the whether every day to see if it's cold enough to break out my sweaters. In November, I stop everything and watch the Hershey Kisses Christmas commercial (you know the one, when the kisses are bells), and for me that marks the start of the holiday season.

Christmas is, by far, my favorite holiday. I would even go so far as to say that December as a whole is the best month out of the year. And why not? My birthday is in December, Christmas is in December, New Year's Eve is in December. The last month of the year has a little bit of extra magic tied up in it. It's like...if Disney World were a month, it would be December.

I do, however, get a little manic. I can admit that. My friends say that I start celebrating Christmas too prematurely. When I start listening to Christmas music out loud, or want to go look at Christmas decorations when they set them out after Halloween, I get told "it's not even Thanksgiving yet, calm down!" Yes, maybe I do get a bit carried away, but isn't that the point of Christmas? It's excess. It's excitement and magic and chaos blown up to the nth degree. Even as an adult, you're expected to not feel the excitement and magic that comes with Christmas morning. It gets drilled in your head: "Christmas is for kids".

Well, I'm here to tell you once and for all, that it's okay to be excited about Christmas.

I am officially well into my twenties, and every year I get hassled for liking Christmas a little too much. And, I have a confession to make: I kept on believing in Santa until I was about 14. I knew he wasn't real at that point, but the magic of Santa and the concept of Santa was so nice to believe in, that I just kept on believing. I held on to that extra bit of Christmas magic for as long as I could, just to keep it alive.

There's nothing wrong with loving Christmas at this kind of level. There's nothing wrong with being the Buddy the Elf of your peer group. I have a friend who loves Christmas so much she participated in a pageant where she was literally crowned Christmas Queen. You don't get that title from just feeling "meh" about the holidays. There has to be a real love of December 25th for a person to want and achieve that title.

I'm not going to pretend that everyone loves Christmas, even if it's not as much as I do, because people just don't. There are people who detest pretty much everything to do with the holiday. That's okay, and I'm not trying to push people who don't like Christmas (or even celebrate it, for that matter) into liking it. What I am trying to do is get those who do like Christmas — or feel ashamed of listening to Christmas music when it's the Fourth of July because they are just that excited for the December holiday-- to know that they are not alone. Christmas is my favorite holiday, after all. I would have to be a Grinch to want to put down those who like Christmas, and we all know how that story goes.