When I was a kid, it wasn’t entirely uncommon to get a big gift during a random holiday get-together.

But I think “holidays” is more of a generic retail term used to get people to buy more and feel less limited.

In the US, there are multiple holidays people get together for. Halloween (to a lesser degree), Thanksgiving, Christmas (or Hanukkah), New Years. Extended families will often get together multiple times for these and then not see each other again until the next year. Thanksgiving really kicks off the retail season with black Friday, but there’s also a lot of time off during the winter time from school and work.

It really is a season with Christmas at the center of it. A lot of our “Christmas” songs don’t even mention Christmas. It’s just songs about winter.