Like when I was a kid, seeing all the holiday decor around the neighborhood, the stores, the streets, always felt cozy. I don’t get that feeling anymore. I get the memory of it, but not the actual feeling. I don’t think I got jaded but maybe I did. What about you?
I’ve cut problematic family out of my life, so what’s left is cheerful lights and hearty food and meaningful gifts, cards, and get-togethers.
I used to rail at the commercialization, but Christianity adopting a pagan holiday tainted whatever spirituality it had, if any, from the beginning.
I’ve even come around on the encroachment of Christmas on other holidays after watching an Extra History video essay on Christmas. The long buying season was meant to give retail staff a break instead of working them to death the two days before Christmas.
It also has its origins as a more rowdy holiday similar to Halloween of going door-to-door and demanding food and partying (“wassailing” in case you ever wondered what that meant).
I like it as an excuse to wind down the year, cheer yourself and others up during long winter nights, connect with friends and family, and indulge in some retail therapy for yourself and others.
I always celebrated the holidays with my family and we had some wonderful times around the holidays, but they have all passed away, so I don’t really do anything over the holidays anymore besides enjoy a free day off
I always celebrated the holidays with my family
This is us this year, my mother was the one to make this time of year bearable
As a kid it was mixed. My parents would bicker sometimes. Seeing extended family was pretty nice. Getting gifts was nice. But it never was a magical fun time.
As an adult it’s hard not to see… How to say. People call themselves Christian. They buy nice toys for themselves and their close ones. They do nothing for the poor, hungry, and vulnerable among them.
It’s hard to feel good about a Switch2 when there’s hunger and concentration camps.
And then that’s extremely alienating when most people don’t care. They don’t care about anything. They just want their cool toy and can’t you just stop talking about all these upsetting things? They don’t want to fix anything they just don’t want to feel bad.
The magic has rekindled 100x over now that I have young kids. Seeing their excitement about lights, decorations, hearing Christmas music, watching all the classic movies… it makes the whole season feel warm and fuzzy again.
It’s my turn to make the magic happen for them now.
Due to my family being terrible and there always being a huge fight it lost its magic.
But with my boyfriend out and about it slowly gains real romantic magic. Cozy, snuggely and love
I fucking hate them. I like that it makes my kids happy, but in all honesty it’s just an excuse to get people to waste money on foreign made bullshit that’s made of toxic materials and will end up in a landfill by next Christmas.
Can’t stand Christmas, but it’s omnipresent in the US from November on (twelve days, my ass!) and being miserable for a sixth of the year is hardly a way to live, so one manages through.
The roommates love it, though, so I try to bite my tongue and let em have fun. They keep searching for Christmas movies that won’t make me wanna rip my teeth out and they’ve found a few, and I’ll keep humoring them as I play video games on the couch.
The boyfriend showed an interest in getting a menorah and learning how to light candles, so that was fun to do. He seems more excited about candles and latkes than I am, but it’s new to him and he wants to share cultural things and bond, so it’s very heartwarming. He keeps fretting about how to keep the menorah clean, not knowing it’s gonna be a wax covered monstrosity in a week and that’s just part of it.
I managed to dodge a vast majority of the stupidity this year, though I gotta attend the boyfriend’s Christmas events, c’est la guerre! His family is Polish first and Christian second, so that largely means pierogi (my pierogi, specifically, as the bf thinks mine rival those from the deli they normally get them from, big compliment) and some thin cracker they break for luck or something.
I swear I saw some xmass stuff before holloween this year.
YES BUY BUY BUY LINE GO UP UP UP! MUST BUY NOW! PRAISE LINE! ALL GLORY TO THE ONE TRUE GOD LINE! BUY PLASTIC TRASH! FILL HOLE IN SPIRIT WITH PLASTIC TRASH! EXPLOIT WORKERS! RUIN WORLD! ALL IN SERVICE TO LINE! ALL PERISH BEFORE THE GLORY OF LINE! CONSUME! CONSUUUUUUUME!
Anyway I fucking hate Christmas.
Holidays have definitely gotten more… I mean, I wouldn’t say “magical”. But enjoyable as an adult.
As a kid, the media I consumed told me that christmas was a happy and magical time that I should be excited about. But as I got older, I kind of ended up facing the fact that the expectations I was sold simply didn’t live up to reality. Christmas was a long parade of boring chores leading up to the day-of. I enjoyed getting presents - but as I grew up, the enjoyment of this faded as I realized that physical things like this didn’t really make me happy. Though, not deriving joy from the presents I got didn’t take the sting out of the fact that the number and quality of presents my sister got always made it clear who was the favorite child. And then visiting extended family was an exercise in extended time in the car, chores, being bored waiting on others, feeling uncomfortable as I didn’t know what to say to people I was “supposed” to have a close emotional relationship with, and never having any privacy.
But pretty much as soon as I left for college, I noticed that returning home for the holidays was absolutely terrible. Away from my family, I felt happy and normal and hopeful for the first time in my life, and returning home put me right back into depression baseline. So I stopped going.
Now as an adult, I spent my holidays with friends. Christmas dinner goes potluck style. Maybe there’s a white elephant. We wear ugly christmas sweaters. But outside the day itself, there is very little buildup and therefore very little stress. Just people I love coming together to have a good time.
Its lost its magic for me definitely. Given it feels like the practitioners the religion seem to be hypocrates (I know this is not the case completely and a small number are starting to fight for what the religion means but still I look at how the society seems to have cruel leaders elected with the support of tacit believers or just not opposed those plainly seeing horrible things done) and my own financial situation as far as the consumerist side. The last thing I enjoyed was putting little presents near my neighbors doors. I like the feeling of something being a surprise or like from santa or fairies even though they know thats not the case. I used to like caroling but if I had the opportunity now I would be like. pass.
I hated Christmas for a long time because it was a bunch of obligations to a huge family as a kid (5 sets of grandparents via divorce and remarriage) where I was bored and the adults fought. For a long time, my Christmas movie was The Ref.
Christmas started rough with my partner; she maintained that certain things about Christmas had to be just so which brought conflict and bad memories. Once we figured out we could decide what we wanted Christmas to be, we created our own traditions and have a generally relaxed day. Our families are on the other side of the country so we don’t bother.
Our Christmas tree has giant googly eyes. We get food from Jewish delis and Chinese restaurants. The past several years we’ve watched one of the Lord of the Rings movies since they’ve got elves in them and I hadn’t seen them. Presents get wrapped and have string shibari on them. It’s been nice and low pressure, neither beholden to strict traditions nor rebelling against them, just making it ours.
This year has been stressful enough that we didn’t give a hoot about decorating. The tree is up but I haven’t gotten around to putting its skirt on. No garland on the railings, no lights in the windows. Doing a lot fewer presents that haven’t even been wrapped. Neither one of us is taking much time off around it. So even our little bit of comfort and joy this year seems like just a slight break in being ground down by everything.
It was never magic for me. But if anything, I’ve been enjoying them more in adulthood than I did as a kid. Prepare tasty food, booze, enjoy them.
