Why We Feel Like Christmas Comes Faster Every Year

If you love the holidays — or at least looked forward to Christmas as a kid — chances are your childhood memories mark December as the longest of months.

Summer days, which for many Brazilian children were marked by school holidays, seemed to last much longer than 24 hours. With no classes and homework to do, each day was filled with free hours. But sometimes it seemed that Santa Claus would never come.

Going through the last month of the year as an adult is a completely different experience, one that sometimes makes older people nostalgic for boredom.

End-of-the-year meetings, payments, holiday shopping, and a huge to-do list to tackle before the year is over—and yet, like in the blink of an eye, when you least expect it, Christmas Day is just days away .

If these descriptions sound real to you, know that you’re not alone.

The perception of time is much studied and today it is known that, for adults, time seems to pass much more quickly. This is what indicates, among other studies, a study carried out by German researchers, which points out that the feeling of “time passing more quickly” is even more evident when it comes to long periods, such as years.

But scientific evidence and expert interpretations explain that this is not only linked to age, but also to factors such as emotional state, social agenda and family context.

After all, why does time seem to pass more quickly for adults?

When you are a child, the stimuli you receive are limited and within certain control. As you get older and become an adult, more responsibilities are added to your routine and you are at the mercy of many variables, which accelerates the perception of time”, says psychologist Cloves Amorim, professor of the Psychology course at PUCPR (Pontifical University Catholic do Paraná) and researcher on aging.

Since everyday activities have a direct influence on how we experience time, having a predictable and activity-filled day helps time flow steadily.

But the passage of time, points out the expert, is a subjective perception, and can be changed to a feeling of slowness or acceleration depending on how you feel when doing each activity.

“A very interesting variable that has been added in recent decades is the intense use of the internet. Who has never been looking at social networks, and when they finally look at the time, they realize that a lot of time has passed? The same thing happens when teenagers spend hours playing video games and lose the notion of time.”

Another factor that interferes, points out Amorim, is the issue of expectations. As children, the desire to finally receive a special gift, see relatives or try to catch Santa’s arrival makes the date something to look forward to.

“When you feel that something good is about to happen, it is possible that this feeling makes time seem slower to finally reach that event. organize the party… Time is more taken up by tasks than by thoughts of expectation.”

The commercial appeal of the date, with advertisements on TV and Christmas windows in stores since October —or even earlier— is another change that increases the psychological feeling that Christmas is coming earlier.

In general, these factors can contribute to the feeling that less time has passed since last Christmas than we would expect compared to the period of childhood.

Still, there is also the possibility that this feeling changes depending on your perception of the date each year —after all, even adults are subject to having expectations for factors such as a trip at Christmas time or to introduce a new person to the family, for example.