I was watching Mike Burbiglia’s Working it Out podcast where he’s interviewing comedian Michael Che, and Che says something like, “Why can’t we have holidays without all the lore? Why does Thanksgiving Day have to be grounded in this convoluted story about indigenous people and settlers? Why can’t it just be Food Day? And Christmas is Gift Day? This is what we’re really here for.”
It helped facilitate some other things I’ve been thinking about. Everywhere you look you can find Christmas stories about how Christmas is not about the presents, yet giving among those who celebrate Christmas is ubiquitous. My husband pointed out that gift giving serves a very important social function across cultures, though the rules around it might be different. And the US is this rampantly commercial culture, but every Christmas we’re lectured about setting all that aside, except we really don’t. It’s like many of us are pretending to have a virtue we don’t really have. It’s a bit bizarre. We shower children with gifts while telling them gifts aren’t important. It’s weird, right?
And while I understand the dangers of getting too materialistic, is there really anything wrong with it if the gifts are important to you at Christmas? I dunno about you, but gift giving this year made my Christmas a lot better. Some of my fondest childhood memories were waking up to all those packages and fantasizing about what might be in them. I love giving and receiving.
I know for Christians that Christmas is largely about Christ’s birth, but you’ll find gift giving among even the most devout. Also Santa Claus really seems to take center stage at Christmas and he is all about the presents. I think this is the sort of thing that develops when you meld a bunch of disparate traditions together. Parts that seem at odds with other parts.
I guess I’m pro-present, is what I’m saying, even if the Grinch makes me tear up every year.
This thread doesn’t only have to be about Christmas, but any holiday practice that leaves you scratching your head.
IMHO New Year’s Day falls on the wrong day, at least culturally in the present day US. Yes, I celebrated yesterday on 1/1. In terms of events that are taking place around the time of a new year, however, September 1st seems like it would make for a much better New Year’s Day due to it being roughly the time that the new school year starts as well as roughly the time football season starts. Mostly, however, it feels to me like the chaos of summer is finally over, and now things can get back to being on a predictable routine. I wouldn’t be in favor of changing the official date, but in my head I celebrate the actual new year on 9/1.
I don’t care what we call Christmas or Thanksgiving - can we just stop having them in the winter when traveling is difficult? How about August? Nothing really going on then…
I remember a friend of my dad saying something like this thread. He said the Fourth of July was his favorite holiday. You don’t have all the family obligations and potential for hurt feelings of Christmas and Thanksgiving. You have friends over, cook burgers on the backyard grill, and have a party. I can get behind that way of thinking.
The bizarre practice of trying to make children believe that a large sentient rabbit hides eggs around your house and how that has any relationship to the clearly religious nature of Easter.
In some areas, Columbus Day has been changed to Italian Heritage Day, which invited the predictable backlash that this was a capitulation to wokeness…
…except that Columbus Day has de facto been “Italian Heritage Day” for decades. (Are all those Knights of Columbus chapters marching in local parades really celebrating the so-called discovery of America, as opposed to their own ethnic heritage?)
I feel the New Year starts in spring, middle of march when flora starts growing again
I know, thats only for us above equator people.
Christmas? Its an old saturnalia festival the church coopted.
Nothing to do with Jesus.
I hate how places are closed on holidays.
I make my son watch videos of MLK on MLK Day at least. He’s actually looking forward to it this year because he read a children’s book about him. Of course the thing my son most wants to know about any historical figure is how old they were when they died and how they died.
You think the MLK question is awkward, this past month he asked me how Jesus died.
Well isn’t that another case of pagan beliefs mixing with Christianity? Not that I know where the Easter Bunny came from. Even as a kid that myth strained credulity for me.
We don’t do myths at my house. When my kid asks me about Santa or the Easter Bunny, I say, “That’s how the story goes.” Sometimes I wonder if he’s missing out somehow, but he gets fun stuff either way.
My daughter somehow missed being told that there was no Santa. I was deployed a lot when she was growing up and I guess her mother never explained things to her. She told me recently (she’s now 52) how stunned she was when her 5th grade teacher said something to the class to the effect of “can you believe there are kids your age who still believe in Santa?” .
I’m betting you don’t have children, or it’s been a long time since they were home. September is when everything ramps up and becomes crazy until sometime in January, when it does finally slow down.
I figured it out more or less on my own. I think most kids do. I did ask my mother point blank when I was 7 or 8 and she fessed up.
I just have this feeling like my kid needs to trust me 100%, so I can’t do it. He is very facts-based, so I don’t think he’d take it well to believe something we said and then be told it’s not true. Yet I think he still has some confusion. He is aware that there are multiple Santas everywhere and enjoys visiting them and I’m pretty sure he knows they are all different people, and thinks it’s great that there are so many. But we don’t have Santa delivering presents. He hasn’t asked us why Santa doesn’t visit our house, so I don’t think he’s thought about it too deeply.
Not to mention, why have the two biggest traveling holidays, Thanksgiving and Christmas, a mere month apart? I’ve never lived too far from my family so I never really thought about it, but now that my son goes to college over 500 miles away, when he was getting ready for the long drive back at the end of this past T-Day weekend he said “see you in two weeks, when the Winter break starts”.
A good policy. I was always direct and truthful with my kids. More of a “If you do that again I’ll kill you (not really)” than “there are social ramifications of your actions that blahblahblahblah.. . . . .” They always understood that every action has a consequence and that it was up to them to decide whether or not that consequence would be worth the action taken.