For those that can’t stand this time of the year, my misery seeks company. What does it for you?
For me: aside from the usual family stuff:
I worked front-end in a post office back when that meant a line-up before I opened the doors to the end of the day when I had to inform the line-up that was still out the door that, yes, I was going to close on time. (Some didn’t take that well. For me it was just another Tuesday…)
It meant a lot of work with little thanks and I had to listen to the same shitty Xmas playlist over and over all day.
Edit/PS: The quick downvote sells it. Perfection. chefs kiss
My mom was the one who loved Christmas. She loved decorating and shopping and the music. She died in 2010 and it has never been the same. It might have been okay if we still had small children in our family but all her grandkids were grown up by the time she died. We didn’t even have any kind of celebration the first few years after. So, Christmas died with her.
I don’t really hate christmas as a whole. It is after all the source of winter break. But we don’t actually need christmas for most of the good things that it currently provides. That said. The fact that I read news stories about a power outage potentially causing a small business to fold because it happened during the “critical” christmas season tells me that christmas is just plain wrong. So presents are why I hate christmas.
All the individual small family units in my family have been married had kids, gotten divorced and most remarried with more kids. There are so many split families with kids that some years we end up having 6-8 family dinner get togethers just to make sure all the kids were included. And since it would be mortal sin to give a gift to one kid and not another even if you had given the other one the previous get together the kids get so much shit they actually get bored opening gifts. The whole thing is an over blown nightmare for everyone involved but the women in the family insist on it because Christmas is for the kids and we can’t take a chance of a 4 year old feeling left out. I threw my hands up a few years ago and my wife handles it all. I just have to be her uber to all these events, watching bored over stimulated kids that want nothing more than to be home playing with their new stuff, being put on display as they open even more stuff.
I genuinely hate the aesthetics of it. I can’t stand Christmas music or Christmas movies (the music especially is just so bad). The “Christmas episodes” TV shows run are so incredibly corny. I find the decorations to be tacky and ugly. I feel like I’m suffocated by so much cheap plastic crap that will be thrown away after the holidays.
I suppose that all wouldn’t be so bad if the “Christmas season” didn’t stretch out for so long. It’s now well underway before Thanksgiving, and I’m being conservative with that. That means at least 10% of the year - so 10% of my life, too - is spent under the Christmas regime.
But on a deeper level, I think it points to a real sickness in society. Capitalism has so thoroughly destroyed our real social connections to each other. It breaks those human bonds and creates atomized individuals who are only supposed to care about themselves. But that’s not who we are as a species - we are social creatures who have a couple hundred thousand years of cooperation with each other in order to survive.
On some level, capital “knows” ripping us away from our social being is not only unnatural, but atomizing us so thoroughly harms social reproduction. Christmas has become a way of resolving this problem. BUT, it’s capitalism… so the solution can’t be something like “give workers the month of December off so people can spend real quality time with each other”.
So capitalism has created this artificial holiday structure where “family”, “giving back”, and “what really matters” is centered, but it’s all done in the most superficial way possible. It’s all kabuki. Capital creates an imitation of social connection and still manages to make it about accumulating more capital. Spend money on presents. Don’t like the commercialism around presents? That’s ok, spend money on airfare or gas to see your family. Use up your meager PTO at the end of the year when it’s slow and costs your boss less. But I think getting workers to spend money is still just the secondary objective of Christmas. It’s much more about getting people to forget how deeply separated we are from each other. To pretend for at least 10% of the year that everything is normal, capitalism is normal and being disconnected from each other is normal so long as you watch a couple movies once a year that are supposed to remind you that “what really matters is family” - the feeling though, not the reality.
That’s what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown.
(Copying what I said on the lemmy.ml cross post because I’ve been thinking about this for a while and want to get it out).
I just hate the overplayed music mainly.
I had a friend whose son died around christmas so it was always a rough time for him :'(
It has been several decades since I was in a position that I was doing more than making magic for others. I’m exhausted. But I want to keep giving my kids core memories because they deserve them. But there is no joy. Just obligation/financial burden/mental exhaustion. I hate it.
While I don’t hate Christmas, my household isn’t Christian and we don’t celebrate it. Of course we know people who do and we’re happy that they’re enjoying it, but the really tedious bit is all the mainstream Christmas marketing and pushes of it as the “norm.”
The fact that the big stores start with the Christmas stuff around September now really gets up our noses.
This was a tough year for us financially, so nearly everything for Christmas had to go on a credit card.
All through November and December, I had to choose between adding more to the debt or disappointing the kids. Logically, I know the right answer is “Don’t spend more than you can afford” but I think any decent dad would agree that “Merry Christmas kids! Nobody gets anything they wanted because I’m a failure at providing for my family!” has to be pretty close to the bottom of acceptable options.
My wife always imagines a Norman Rockwell Christmas, and has big plans for what she’ll cook and what games we’ll play and how she’ll decorate. She does a great job every time, but it’s a lot. She stresses over being able to do it all, and any inevitable mishaps are catastrophic.
This year, I’m trying not to be a Scrooge, but it’s a challenge.
It’s all humbug!
This post is hilariously popular…
My main issue with Christmas is that I have had a few incredibly traumatic experiences during it over the course of my life. Now it just makes me feel extra stressed and depressed. I also come from a split family, with a bonus split around 10 years ago. I’m not longer really in contact with the two people I would have considered my brother’s growing up. Also my wife is working on permanent residency in canada, so she is also really sad about not seeing her family for years now.
Also my wife flat out refused to visit my mom or dad this year, thank god for drugs and self harm!
I’m kinda done with it taking up a third of the year. You start seeing Christmas decorations and shit hit store shelves before Halloween.
When my dad was a kid, my grandparents did absolutely nothing for Christmas - no decorations, no tree, etc - until Christmas Eve, then they went all out. Then they’d pack it all up the day after Christmas. I feel like if the Christmas “season” was only a few days, I’d hate it much less.
I reserve some time between ~Dec 20 and ~Jan 10 for bright colored sweaters, visiting relatives, exchanging gifts particularly for the kids, rich food and strong drink…I live in the Northern hemisphere, it’s the beginning of winter, it’s cold and bleak and the days are short, spend a bit of time doing something to keep your brain inside your skull.
Why are we selling 8 foot tall inflatable glowing candy canes in early October?
I used to hate Christmas because I felt obligated to surround myself with my asshole family.
Then I retired from family Christmas, and all is well.
i hate having to come up with ideas on what to buy for people who already have everything. all just because we are brainwashed by capitalism
I buy experiences and consumables. No more stuff.
I mainly just focus on buying people nice edible treats. Biscuit boxes, chocolate, turkish delight, fancy coffees or teas.
My wife is determined to make it as stressful and chaotic as she can, and then spend the rest of the year complaining about how stressful and chaotic it was.
The constant bombastic music is absolutely terrible. Jingle jingle jingle jazzy jazzy BELLS BELLS BELLS BELLS DING DANG DONG And remember, if you complain, it means you don’t want any presents this year!!
Also it’s MERRY CHRISTMAS not HAPPY HOLIDAYS even though there’s advent, christmastide, St John’s Day, St. Nicholas Day, all those funny South American holidays, all Christian holidays celebrated at this time that are not Christmas. But JESUS is the reason for the season.
My wife has been listening to stomp n holler Christmas songs since fucking November it’s getting really old.
It’s shameless corporate horse shit disguised as shameless religious horse shit.
