When is the best time to decorate for Christmas?

Bailey Borkowski
The Ramspondents

It’s the most wonderful time of the year, at least it is according to Andy Williams. People are decking the halls, trimming their trees, hanging up lights, and spreading Christmas cheer, but, can you start spreading Christmas cheer too early?

“I always decorate for Christmas the day after Thanksgiving, that means it’s Christmas and you should be decorating” said Chloe Carrol, a Fort Collins resident. “If you decorate before then you aren’t giving Thanksgiving the proper attention.”

Fort Collins resident John Robert says he can't get enough Christmas, “I hate Halloween, so as soon as it hits November first I’m going all in, putting up decor and listening to Christmas music. It just makes me feel good.”

John isn’t wrong that the earlier you decorate the happier you feel. In a study by the American Christmas Tree Association (ACTA), psychologists found that even just pulling out the decor can boost dopamine levels.

Jami Warner, the executive director at ACTA, said, “Studies show that there are mental health benefits related to decorating for Christmas before December”.

Fort Collins decided that the best time to decorate for the Holidays was Nov. 7 as that was the day they held their Annual Downtown Lighting Ceremony.

Bailey Borkowski is the station manager at CTV 11 and a journalism student at Colorado State University who focuses on reporting the full and accurate truth and keeping the Fort Collins community informed. 

Calvin Masten
The Ramspondents

Fort Collins’ Liberty Common School has recently received a federal grant for its new junior high campus. 

The charter public school in the Poudre School District received the grant through Great Schools Colorado, administered by the Colorado League of Charter Schools. The grant will be used to develop additional facilities at the school’s standalone junior-high, which serves students in grades seven and eight. 

Liberty itself is a tuition-free, charter public school that utilizes the Core Knowledge Curriculum throughout its K-8 grade levels. They adhere to a lottery-style admission where any children of Colorado residents can enroll.

The grant has split construction and improvements to Liberty into two parts: the first includes the actual classrooms for seventh and eighth graders that opened this August, and the second is a project that will increase the building’s size by 200%. That increase will include a gymnasium, locker rooms, lunchroom, academic labs, special-education spaces, and physical-education rooms that will be finished by August 2026. 

This grant coincides with other improvements Liberty has been making toward its educational services to Northern Colorado families. In 2022, Liberty’s Board of Directors moved to lease a second elementary facility in southwest Fort Collins, expanding its elementary seating by 65% and leading to the school’s purchase of the property in 2024. 

Almost $1.8 million, or 74% of the project, is funded by the federal CSP grant passed through Great Schools Colorado. The total project cost is $2,426,852.

To help accommodate the school’s growing student population at its junior high, Liberty also purchased new property adjacent to its elementary campus on Sharp Point Drive. Much of the grant will also be used for equipment and tools within the school, including band instruments, science lab equipment and other durable goods for the facility.

Calvin Masten is a third-year Journalism and Media Communication major and Sociology minor at Colorado State University. His fondness for interpersonal stories and human connections drives his enjoyment of writing, editing, and filming.

By Jake Sherlock
The Ramspondents 

Thank you for your continuing support of the Ramspondents. 

It was three months ago today, on Sept. 11, 2025, that the first issue of the Ramspondents began to show up in readers’ inboxes. That first issue went to all of two subscribers. By the next day, we had five. A couple of days later, we were up to 14. 

Today, we have 222 subscribers who open and read our work about half the time (we call this metric “open rate,” and it officially stands at 56.75%). This is our 117th post of the semester, and we’ll have a few more coming out before our staff scatters for Winter Break. We’ll have one or two returning reporters. For the most part, you’ll get to meet a brand new staff of CSU journalism students when we resume publication in January. 

Of those 222 subscribers, I’ve had the good fortune to hear from around 50 or so of you throughout the fall. Sometimes it was to let us know about a mistake we needed to correct. Sometimes it was to criticize us for not including a necessary perspective or source that could have provided a more complete story. Sometimes, it was to suggest that we profile a unique artist, dig deeper into an issue impacting the city, or let us know that you appreciated our election coverage. 

For many newsletters, subscribers are the data needed to set advertising rates. To me, subscribers are my co-teachers. Each time you reached out to one of our reporters, you were giving them a taste of what to expect in their first reporting jobs. 

“Audience engagement” is the buzzword of the moment, but good journalists have practiced thoughtful listening to their audiences long before social media gave us a way to measure it. 

We are planning to increase our engagement by returning to the place where we met so many wonderful co-teachers/subscribers. We launched our own Reddit page for the Ramspondents. We hope you’ll stop by to give us feedback on our stories, talk about the issues affecting Fort Collins and let us know what you want to see us cover in the future. 

Launching this page was the brainchild of Robert Sides, a second-year student who also reports for campus media outlets CTV, KCSU and the Rocky Mountain Collegian. Robert regularly reads various content on Reddit. He’s been known to read the Fort Collins subreddit to see what questions residents are asking about their city that he can answer. 

The hope with our new subreddit is to host thoughtful conversations about journalism and to provide the local information you ask for. We don’t want to take away from the r/Fort Collins community, just offer  a focused place to talk about specific issues related to our coverage of public life and safety. I’m looking forward to reading your thoughts there. 

In the meantime, I hope you all have a wonderful holiday season full of good cheer. 

Jake Sherlock is the editor of the Ramspondents and an instructor for the Journalism and Media Communication department in CSU’s College of Liberal Arts.