That's Ms. Scrooge to you.

[snugglekitty]

I hate Christmas.*

Actually, saying that I hate Christmas doesn't go quite far enough. I loathe Christmas with a pure and unadulterated passion. And I sincerely wish that there wasn't more of it for me to hate every year.



I hate the music. I hate the frenzied shopping. I hate the way that this holiday makes many people assume that everybody is Christian (or possibly Jewish if they have a slight clue). I hate the superficiality. I hate the materialism. I hate that you're supposed to be having Warm Fuzzies for your bio-family at this time of year. (Even for people who like their biofamilies, you can't produce those feelings on demand!) I hate that strangers think it's okay to ask you personal questions at this time of year. ("Who's this for?" "What are you doing for the holidays?" "Don't you just LOVE this time of year?") I hate the expectation of cheerfulness and gift-giving.

And I HATE HATE HATE the fact that the "Christmas season" starts earlier and earlier every year. Past a certain point, I can't watch TV, listen to the radio, or go shopping because I just can't stand it. It makes me want to blow things up.

If I had lightning bolts, I would use them to burn down every establishment that displays holiday decorations, has holiday sales, or even uses the phrase "pre-holiday shopping" before Thanksgiving Day. The rest would learn! Wouldn't they? For goddess' sake, people, it's not even Halloween yet! (Now there's a holiday I can get behind. Fun for all ages and, imo, any spiritual aspects don't get shoved down your throat.)

"The Grinch Who Stole Christmas" would be my favorite Christmas story ever, except that the ending is WRONG, ALL WRONG.



Who's with me?

*Please do not interpret this post as bashing Christianity. As far as I'm concerned, the holiday was okay when the Christians had merely stolen it from the pagans. They did some nice things with it. (When's the last time you gave alms on Christmas Day? Or went wassailing?) It's when the marketing industry stole it from the Christians that things started getting horrifying.

Comments

[woodwardiocom.livejournal.com]

Who's with me?

[abashed shrug] Sorry. I love Christmas. I like the songs. Except for the parking, I like the malls at Xmastime. I don't like the assumption that everyone is Christian or the superficiality. I don't like gross materialism, but I do like More Stuff Please. I do get warm fuzzies for my bio-family at this time of year — and for my chosen family. I don't mind the personal questions (though I don't get many of them). I love gift-giving.

-However, I think the Christmas Season should start the Monday after Thanksgiving, and not a day earlier. That one I'll grant.

[jacflash.livejournal.com]

Y'know, I'm not at all Christian (though I was raised Episcopalian, sorta), and I think most varieties of modern Christianity fall on a spectrum between silly-but-quaint and idiotic-and-destructive, but I like Christmas trees and music and carols and excited kids and seeing the lights in the snow and whatnot. The marketing is obnoxious, but marketing in general gets more obnoxious and cynical and invasive with every passing year. In recent years, I've started to think of "Christmas" as my family does it as a sort of impressionistic modernized Yule, celebrated a few days late.

(Does one "go wassailing"? Or does one just sort of stand around the bowl of mulled wine with one's clan and give ever-more-drunken toasts?)

[moominmolly.livejournal.com]

I always thought wassailing was like a more drunken version of caroling: stand outside someone's house and sing until they give you hot spicy booze.

[tisana.livejournal.com]

Sorry, I'm with woodwardiocom on this one--there are things to dislike, sure, but for the most part I like it. I mean, true, after years in retail, it took a while to enjoy it again, since they start discussing the holiday season in August, and I still like to avoid malls between Thanksgiving and the New Year. Parking's a bitch, people are pissy, and in general miss the spirit of things. I hate being expected to enjoy time with biofamily when I'd prefer the company of chosen family. I despise the commercialism and cringed when I saw an Xmas display up while it was still technically summer. I dislike the strange social conventions that make everyone feel awkward about gift giving and invitations.

But.
I love gift giving when I can find or make just the right thing that will make someone smile. I like (good) Xmas music. I like seeing a nicely decorated tree in the snow. I love caroling with my childhood UU church before a quick candlelight service. I love the smell of wrapping paper and scotch tape and the nostalgia it brings. I love collecting ornaments and thinking of them as things I'll share with a family someday. I even enjoy having to put the delicate ornaments higher up so the pets don't attack them.

So. Yeah. There you have it.

[moominmolly.livejournal.com]

You know, I grew up giving alms on Christmas Day and caroling around the neighborhood: who wouldn't want an excuse to tromp around in the snow singing, stop at people's houses all over, drink cider to warm up a bit, and then retromp out into the snow again? It was all so goddamned Norman Rockwell, but in a warm and fuzzy kind of way. So yeah. Me, I'm with you. I resent the hell out of malls and advertisements at Christmastime. All the people, shoulder to shoulder, buying ill-considered gifts for people they feel obligations toward? Hate.

I don't mind the warm fuzzy thing, though. I guess it's just because I tend to feel that kind of thing more strongly in the winter. I become a homebody, curling in chairs and reading a lot, and luckily, that's something my whole family (bio and non) loves to do silently together. :) Last Christmas, D and I (and brother P, and uncle W) went out to visit my brother R and his family in central nowhere, Michigan. No malls. No city. We just hung out in the snow and went snowmobiling, because it's easy to get vacation time in late December. It was a very escapist Christmas, and I loved it. The closer I can get to a midwinter warm-fuzzy-fest (and, correspondingly, the further I can get from an overhyped overcommercialized stuff-fest), the happier I am.

That said, I really do like peppermint stick ice cream, and that's easiest to get in December.

[catya.livejournal.com]

i am SO with you.

[catya.livejournal.com]

and was totally aggravated that there was a fucking CHRISTMAS SPECIAL on before the Wallace and Grommit movie! argh!

[moominmolly.livejournal.com]

Stuffmas creeping up before Thanksgiving annoys me. Stuffmas creeping up before HALLOWEEN will REALLY hork me off.

Heart to heart and hand in hand, just as long as we have we

[weegoddess.livejournal.com]

Especially because Halloween stuff appeared before Labor Day this year. I shit you not.

"The Grinch Who Stole Christmas" would be my favorite Christmas story ever, except that the ending is WRONG, ALL WRONG.

Well, I'm with you on part of that. Call it whussy warm fuzziness, but giving from one's heart always seems to be the best path, whereas destruction for the sake of depriving someone else is just mean and doesn't feel good to anyone. I can see why the Grinch smiled differently after he 'got it'. The actual moral of the Grinch was that Christmas doesn't come from a store. Not that our luvly retail establishments achknowledge it.

The part about the Grinch ending that bugs me is that his eyes have to change to FUCKING BLUE when he turns 'good'. I have nothing against blue-eyed folk, but I see that as damn Nazi-Master-race-descrimination. Most of the world's population have brown eyes. Why can't the Grinch, who had a non-human eye color to begin with, have another non-human eye color?

That said, I always cry happily when all the Whos join in the circle and sing together. And the 'light' rises from their midst. Besides the obvious Pagan-circle reference, I see it as very pan-religious; the light is love and most religions can agree that Love is what it's about. Which is what I try to see in Christmas. And I'm all about hating the Materialsm. Any time of year.

[klingonlandlady.livejournal.com]

I've pretty much felt the same way, esp. wrt avoiding malls and consumerism...

But there are some aspects of it i've been able to cherrypick as being pretty good treatment for seasonally defective disorder: an excuse to have fires, music, pretty lights, rum and eggnog... I'd just rather call it Yule and celebrate the solstice, and call the sun back.

[ceelove.livejournal.com]

Yup, hate it. This year I went so far as to send out a letter to family, saying, "No, REALLY, do not buy us anything for Christmas."

Fortunately for me, I have a job and a lifestyle that insulate me from the worst of the horrors.

[curly-chick.livejournal.com]

I especially love the fact that most people connote Channukah as being equivalent to Christmas in terms of religiosity. So, the ones that are p.c. (who are getting fewer each year) ask: are you going home for Channukah, is your family up, what are you doing for it?

Channukah is not our big holiday. Today is (Yom Kippur--which by the way I should be thinking about).

I get annoyed when I see Christmas decorations all over an office, with a token menorah or two. It doesn't make it better! THere are more than two religions damn it! What about separation of church and state?

By the way, I grew up in a predominantly jewish community. i loved Christmas because it was movie and chinese food night in my family. I still think that is the best way to celebrate!

[harlequinaide.livejournal.com]

I loath Christmas with a fiery loathing. I mean, I dislike holidays in general. I hate being told when to express love openly, when it's okay to be Irish and when to appreciate the nice things about America. And that's not even considering the many days of the year when Christianity is shoved down my throat like the last hot dog at a speed eating contest. Because, y'know, there was a risk I'd forget Christ died.

I don't like Halloween, or New Year's, or Thanksgiving, either.

But I have a special loathing reserved for Christmas, when it's okay to put up disgusting house decorations, play bad music and get more spending-focused than Paris Hilton after a breakup. Bah f'n Humbug. There's no "cheer" at Christmas. There's forced famililal obligations, tense dinner conversation and stockings full of stress. Everything has to be perfect, from dinner to the presents.

One year, a house across the block from where I was living put a speaker in their window and played Christmas music for the whole neighborhood to hear, at all hours. I took a perverse delight in calling the cops on them, twice, for noise complaints. There's something deeply satisfying about a 20-year-old getting a 60-year-old grandmother busted for disturbing the peace. Ah, those were the days.

[catskillz.livejournal.com]

I like regular old Christmas, but American Marketing Christmas has to be set on fire. What gets me the most is all of the robotic crap that CVS and Walgreens sell (hip hop dancing Santa! country music reindeer!) for cheap. Where does it all go? Into a closet or into a landfill. Argh, fire for all of it!

What helps me is having traditions for regular old Christmas that I really look forward to. Christmas performances by the Revels group, pretty lights outside, Christmas crackers and mince pies, reading vegetation myths, catching up in my journal. The big one for me is going to England for Christmas every year. Nothing rocks out like attending midnight services in a tiny English village church - it's beautiful.

[weegoddess.livejournal.com]

Funny, growing up as a Catholic, there were only two times when I really loved going to church (though we had to go every Sunday): Midnight Mass at Christmas and the Easter Vigil. Why? They both happened at night, beginning outside with a procession into the church, the whole place was lighted up with candles, they burned incense and we all sang and chanted together. Those times were the only times I felt the Divine in a Sacred Moment.

Is it any wonder that I'm now a Pagan. I think I always was.

Happy Yule!

[aillecat.livejournal.com]

I hated Xmas until I had a child, now I love love love it! (for reasons that may become obvious), I get to spoil my child rotten, while still maintaining the rest of the year (besides his birthday) with a strict code of behaviour and earning rewards and things he wants.

[rabbitorf.livejournal.com]

I'm with you. While I do think that celebration is not a bad thing, nor is family or putting a big flashy pick me up in the middle of a literally dark time of year, I hate the comercialism, the fact that it gets earlier every year, the fact that it's everywhere and totally inescapable, the forced sacharine-sweetness of the whole deal. Throwing in the occasional menorah does not mean it's ok to bombard me with red and green glitter. I'd much rather have Yule and some sense to the whole thing that ties it to the season. Chosen community. Meaning instead of money.

There's this overwhelming sense every year of being outside of christmas. Watching tv when others are with family and staying home because everyone else is busy and everything is closed. As Rachel said, chanukka is a relatively minor holiday that is spread out over more than a week, so there isn't a day when all your family is in the same place and it happens at a different time every year anyway. Even if i want nothing to do with christmas, i'm forced to deal with it if only because it's celebrated by default. Everything is closed. If there's no mixing of church and state, why does everything close for a supposedly religious holiday? It isn't as if we all close down just in case jews want to go spend time with their family today.

My partner *loves* it and i'm all for having fun for whatever reason. If it reminds you of your childhood and it's a good feeling to remember family traditions, great. I celebrate some of the jewish holidays more for cultural and family reasons than religious, too. Decorating a tree last year, having the lights in the living room when it was dark out, baking cookies, and giving gifts made things less cold and damp-feeling. But i can do without the dancing santas and christmas vomitting all over the world for months at a time.

[hugh-mannity.livejournal.com]

me! Me! MEEEEE!!!!!

I have to admit to liking a lot of the traditonal foods and some of the classical music (old carols, Christmas Oratorio, The Messiah, that sort of thing).

The rest. Color me elsewhere.

My local supermarket has a 15' inflatable snowglobe on display ($149.95 plus tax). It's been there since September. Labor Day weekend, IIRC. I'm not saying it's tacky, tacky doesn't even begin to come close, but every time I see it a red haze clouds my vision and my trigger finger itches for an AK47 with a 100-round drum magazine.

But I'd settle for a quiet moment with a BB gun or good catapult.


(BTW -- here via adamantine1. I have baby/childbirth books if you're interested and can deliver.)

[lady-anemone.livejournal.com]

Yes, I hear you on the red haze.

Although if one could be sneaky with, say, a pair of scissors, there would be no need for a BB gun.

Of course, the idea of a catapult and a Christmas display makes me feel all warm and fuzzy and giggly. What can I say? I'm just like that. :)

Absolutely I'm interested in your baby/childbirth books. Drop me an email and we'll work something out. Thanks!

[ayalanya.livejournal.com]

my biofamily treats birthdays and xmas basically the same way, now that i'm out of the house (which is to say, we give each other lists of what we want) - though before that, everyone (at the behest of the mother, who joined in until she couldn't, and then ordered the rest of us to) had to participate in decorating the house and tree (bloody plastic monstrosity. they got one with fiberoptics two years before i moved out). it sort of spoiled me for anything xmas-ish for a while.

however, i appreciate that they seem to treat it so cynically, and don't bother trying to dress it up in magic, these days. it all leaves room for yule celebrations.

otherwise, ick. though i do have a soft spot for transiberian orchestra's "christmas eve in sarajevo."

well

[cyclothemia.livejournal.com]

i like giving, and being all fuzzy with my chosen pack of friends, family and lovers. but, then, i don't need a holiday to make me be that way... i get to be fuzzy and friendly and loving and giving all the time.
the gift-giving is generally wasted, since i like to give and get presents all the time, not just at certain times of the year. i'm terrible at keeping presents hidden, so i find them, ooh and aah over them, and give them away as quickly as possible.
i like the sun coming back, and the sharing of poetry and song... though that, too, is kinda hard to get behind here in CA. :/ the sun doesn't really go away for long...
i find Xmas matters less to me (and, dare i say, others) here, and I don't feel as stifled by it either. maybe it's lack of snow, bitter cold, and winter clothes beyond sweatshirts...
i do like some of the music though. the projekt holiday cds, the reggae xmas, blues xmas, punk, etc i find very enjoyable and fun. i think the music and the tree are the only traditions i cling to... cause, well, i like decorating my blue and silver tinsel treee with crows and silver baubles, and i enjoy weirding people out with songs like "i wanna be a xmas present" by pansy division.