Holidays and Cognitive Dissonance

[Alessan]

@SuntanLotion

I hate how places are closed on holidays.

Why, because working people don’t deserve a day off?

[SuntanLotion]

Do they work every waking hour?

[FlikTheBlue]

@bump

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.

A 24 year old step daughter. But I’m not so much thinking busy as unpredictable. September and October are, in my experience, especially predictable and routine months. They may be busy, but it’s not the kind of busy or chaos caused by colleagues being out on vacation, a lack of routine events, or unpredictable events suddenly popping up. I recall things like every Tuesday after school my daughter has to be at some sort of practice, or every Thursday morning she has to get to school 30 minutes early because of whatever activity the school does on Thursday morning, that type of stuff. I enjoy and thrive on that kind of busy, because it’s routine.

Summer, however, tends to be filled with chaos of the sort like “we were planning to relax at home this weekend, but wait, we just saw this event happening out of town a 3 hour drive away, so let’s go do that and spend the night out of town as well, won’t that be fun?” That kind of stuff happening on an unpredictable and inconsistent basis saps my mental energy.

[Spice_Weasel]

@solost

Not to mention, why have the two biggest traveling holidays, Thanksgiving and Christmas, a mere month apart?

Valid. Why not in January or February? Things always look so bleak to me after the holidays. Just an endless stretch of Winter with nothing to look forward to until Spring. They need to break it up more.

[Der_Trihs]

@Spice_Weasel

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.”

People just really like Having An Excuse.

This conversation really reminds me of Oktoberfest. Notably it started as wedding celebration and is now officially “a celebration of Bavarian culture”, but it’s really an excuse to drink and party.

It started as a huge festival on a Prince’s wedding day, they all had so much fun they did it again the next year, then every year or two after that, getting more elaborate over time, moved it to October for better weather, started being imitated across the world under the same name…an interesting example of a holiday evolving into existence. But it does demonstrate that people really want some sort of excuse for their festivals, even if they barely pretend it’s anything but an excuse.

[kaylasdad99]

@Chefguy

@Spice_Weasel

This thread doesn’t only have to be about Christmas, but any holiday practice that leaves you scratching your head.

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.

Heh. If an alien came to Earth and learned how chocolate rabbit ears came to be in stores in the spring, he’d order the invasion fleet to attack immediately.

[Al128]

businesses find all possible excuses to copy whatever - as long as money can be made …

think: Haloween in countries where this was never a thing … (mostly driven by sweets-stuff companies)

[kaylasdad99]

@Al128

think: Haloween in countries where this was never a thing … (mostly driven by sweets-stuff companies)

….or videogame companies…