This is for the non Christians and the Christians, those who see it as secular and religious. Sorry if it comes off a little irreverent.
So is it the food? The music? The family getting together? Spirituality? Community? The campiness?
For me, it’s the Christmas specials. The Rankin Bass ones–they’re so cheesy, but full of nostalgia. And they’re so bad they’re good. LOVE them.
Oh, and Home Alone. Definitely Home Alone.
What about you?
Food. There’s so much good food that seems to only exist near the holidays:fruitcake (you heard me right), eggnog, Pomegranite 7Up, red velvet cake. And since people are so much more willing to pig out near the holidays, you can feast on as much food as you want. Although I am Christian, there’s so much cheesy secular Christmas stuff during that time of the year that it almost seems to be forgotten. (Easter seems to be a much more spiritual time of the year for me.) Family is of course important, but that can and should be year long.
Jeez, I don’t even know. Going to the Nutcracker with my daughter is always a high point. Hanging decorations in the house and doing up the tree…listening to Christmas music on the radio…seeing the neighbors’ crazy light displays…visiting with relatives we only see a couple of times a year…the whole thing, really.
Oh, and presents. Definitely presents.
Getting drunk with my wife and watching Bad Santa. Sometimes with other people, sometimes just the two of us. We always make sure to have a really decadent meal. One year we watched it on my laptop in bed in a hotel in Singapore while eating take out spare ribs.
Replace Bad Santa with Rankin Bass Rudolph or the Year Without a Santa Claus (and the ribs with Devil Dogs and Oreos) and you have my perfect Xmas.
I always look forward to Midnight Mass each Christmas. The beautiful music, including Adeste Fideles, the liturgical texts, the ritual, the silence…even the inevitable heat in the choir loft, all add up to make the Christmas experience for me. By the time Christmas Day itself unfolds, I always feel that we’ve already had the best bit.
Ha! I love watching Home Alone and counting the number of times the villains should have died while going through Kevin’s booby traps.
I like lots of things about Christmas. The fact that we have LOTS of food and drink, presents, the candlelight Christmas Eve service at church (and I’m agnostic!), good Christmas carols (badass classical ones sung by a choir), our decorations (candles in the window), the Christmas tree, snow falling outside while carols play on the stereo…
Honestly, the consumerist stuff is the only thing I DON’T love about Christmas. I like everything else just fine.
The time off work. Christmas through New Years we’re closed and don’t even have to burn vacation time, it’s all holiday pay. Time to recover from the mad rush, play with all the new presents, eat all the leftovers, visit with friends, do absolutely nothing if that’s what I want to do. The gift of time means the most to me.
The food. Oh dear god, the food. Homemade tattie soup & prawn cocktail to start; turkey with gravy, bread sauce & cranberry sauce, pigs in blankets, brussels sprouts, parsnips, carrots, peas, sweetcorn, roast tatties, mashed tatties, turnip, pork stuffing and chestnut stuffing for the main meal; cheesecake and clootie dumpling for pudding… drooooool. It is my favourite meal of the year.
My mam and I go out to the pub for the night after we’ve had some time to digest our meal; that’s always a laugh.
Getting together with extended family is a big deal for me. Even if we do nothing but hang around the house chatting, it’s a good Christmas.
The whole gift exchange thing is repellent to me; I would gladly give up receiving gifts if it meant I didn’t have to give gifts. I have no aversion at all to spending money, but trying to think up stuff to buy people, and - equally bad - trying to come up with suggestions of things for people to buy me is extremely distressing. In shopping seasons past, there have been times when my mom was getting snippy about demanding ideas from my sister; so much for the Christmas spirit. :rolleyes:
The spectacle. How some folks use too many lights and lawn ornaments. Or little old ladies in blinkie holiday sweaters. Over-the-top feasts and presents out the wazoo. Enough Christmas programming and songs to make you have sugar overload. The whole idea that there just can’t be too much. I love it!
Yeah, there’s a reason Jack on Will Grace called himself gayer 'n Christmas!
My favorite part about Christmas are the lights. They just make me happy.
<slight hijack>
What I miss most about Christmas is the Slovak carols they used to sing at my parent’s church. Roman Catholic Churches in rural Pennsylvania used to be based on whatever group immigrated and landed there, so there was the Slovak Church, the Hungarian Church, the Polish Church, etc. Well, due to dwindling parishioners they have had to combine the three parishes, so I guess they feel they can’t sing the Slovak songs. I’d be totally happy if they sang Slovak, Polish, and Hungarian Songs, but they don’t do that – I guess too many of the folks who knew the languages have passed on. I do miss them though. </slight hijack>
If I had to sum it up in one word I guess it would be “nostalgia”, although that feels like a weak term for it. Christmas causes me to feel a deep connection with my early childhood self… especially trimming the tree with the ornaments we used when I was a kid, and listening to the Christmas albums we listened to back then.
There are lots of things I like about Christmas but that’s probably at the top of the list.
You know, I may have to change my answer to this. It encompasses just about everything I said in my last reply, but sums it up more neatly.
I’m German, so…cooking and baking so lavishly you have leftovers until Valentine’s Day. My fudge recipe I’ve used for years makes *5 pounds *at a time! My kitchen is liberally dusted with cocoa powder, cinnamon, nutmeg, and chili spices for a month.
Now it’s watching the kids stumble downstairs to the tree on Christmas morning to see if Santa came. Nothing like it.
When I was a kid, it was always the stocking. I’d get up at 5 in the morning to go see if my stocking was less empty than the previous night. I’d sneak it in to the bathroom and turn the light on, check out what was in it, pack it all back up and re-hang it.
Taking my kids to cut down a tree, trimming the tree with my kids, reading the note to Santa they compose every Christmas Eve, watching the anticipation on their faces as they open each present… the kids. It’s all about the kids.
Oh- and the food.
Being with family is by far the best thing about Christmas. Thinking about each individual and what their interests are and how to match that with a gift is fun too.
Bad jokes, good food, and making great memories - what’s not to like? *
*travel, especially airports and airplanes - ugh.