Well, shit, there went my holiday cheer.

Even if one were inclined to ignore Christmas, it would mean ignoring family and loved ones who are either way into it or at least marginally into it. Participating is a social function as much as anything. I'm an atheist, but I see Christmas as secular holiday anymore anyway, so I enjoy the social aspect of it...and all the purdy lights!

(If it's about the birth of Jesus, spring does make more sense, as clues in the bible suggest he was actually born sometime in the spring.)

Dunno what you decided to do with your non-driving vacation, but..

If you go to the Parliament building at midnight there might be a church group there with votive candles, snacks, and pewter/“stained glass” hearts made by a little girl.

I stood there for like ten minutes showing God Yan Win sitting on a stool playing Pachelbel’s Canon in D and people eating Drano and becoming small volcanoes.

You should have sold a lot of drugs and been normalized as best you can, but what are you gonna do.

I’m going to Hawaii for for the New Year and my birthday, and like fourteen more days.

Hostel, meet tent.

@3, your pseudonym would suggest that you're an asshole.

Whether we pick on Christmas or not, @3 has a point. There's a very good reason to have a winter holiday, and to treat it as somewhat major. I'd hazard a guess that nearly every culture which has lived in temperate regions has celebrated a resurrection of some sort in the depths of winter. It is dark, and cold, and dangerous, and that's how we reassure ourselves that the sun is going to come back again. We celebrate them rather differently now, but some kind of winter festival is nearly inevitable. And, I think, shouldn't be discounted as worthless. Christians are one group, but well before whatever Jesus may or may not have been around to kickstart that religion our temperate-zone ancestors had been huddling around fires in caves, hiding from the icy death that surrounded them, holding their families and trying to believe that the light would come again. It's very, very culturally embedded.

That said, I celebrate Christmas all Jewish-like too. Apart from Christmas lights, which are awesome year-round decorations as well that I have an excuse to use publicly in December, I ignore it. Yes, it's silly and wasteful and all of that. And I hate little more than the incessant terrible music that we seem to be contractually obligated to slog through in every public space for a month every year. It absolutely doesn't have to be this annoying and destructive. But people need a time during the dark part of the year to spend with the people they care about, a time to show that they care. The problem is in the expression we have culturally chosen, not the idea of the holiday itself.

I have a number of friends who use Thanksgiving as that holiday. I've never cared about that one at all, but it slots neatly into the nurturing show-you-care-and-celebrate-together slot that empties out when you dump Christmas. I've come to appreciate it during my long, stupid adult years. As a non-food-person, my version has long been New Year's Eve, when my friends and I can cross a threshold together through the dark into something we promise ourselves will be better. We celebrate each other's successes over the last year and remind each other that whatever seems bleak now, it isn't permanent.

The way that Christmas is observed now could well be done less often (or not at all). But we're gonna need a place to sit by the fire and tell each other stories of better days ahead, and show each other that even in the dark and the cold we are still together, and we are still safe, and we are still loved.

The giving and receiving of gifts is one of the most basic and oldest forms of a human expression of trust and goodwill.

Anyone who is unable to derive joy from these activities has interpersonal problems that need addressing.

Also, if someone give you an Instant Pot, that person is to be commended, and if you let it molder unused, you are a damn fool. Those things are amazingly great.

"And yet people, for some reason, seem to actually enjoy this holiday"- because not everyone is bucket of grumble and grunts who hates their family and must at all cost avoid enjoying pretty much anything. @6- you are absolutely correct on the instant pot.

What year did the left officially become as joyless and hateful as the right? I'm thinking it was at some point during Obama's second term but it would be great if we could set a date for future reference

Katie, I think you may be wrong on the flying vs. driving:
https://www.theicct.org/blogs/staff/planes-trains-and-automobiles-counting-carbon

A large passenger plane gets the equivalent of about 43 miles per gallon of jet fuel per person flown. Flying is the most efficient form of transport, unless you have an electric car and the electricity comes from clean sources. (Of course, flying in a private jet is not efficient, we're talking fuel efficient twin engine jumbos.)

ICCT is an impartial non-profit devoted to accuracy on clean transport and helped discover the VW diesel emissions scandal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Council_on_Clean_Transportation

Katie, I would not have expected this drivel from you. I assumed you were an independent thinking type, able to define an experience for yourself. Your willingness to let other people's concept of the holiday seep into your brain, passively, comes as a surprise.

Well I thought it was fucking Awesome and I'm
gonna toss $91* in your (and sarah's) honor into
the next red and white paper shredder I see.

Merry Xmas!

*is a check okay?

Oh, and hell, yeah!
Every four years is perfect.

During a Prez election year'd make it easiest to remember but
I wonder if the Politics mightn't be better the year just previous....