How is it not an option?
Family. I’ve got out of the present-giving obligation, and I don’t put up decorations, but it’s still a day to travel hundreds of kilometers in the middle of summer to have lunch with a bunch of vegans.
Summer? Oh, OK, there’s your first problem.
My favorite holiday is MLK Day. You know why? There’s no expectation that I’m going to decorate or bake special treats or buy people presents or travel a bajillion miles to visit family or even go to any social gatherings.
There are just so many LOGISTICS to Christmas. I have my present-shopping spreadsheet and so many items on the to-do list and it’s a really busy time at work and my weekends are booked with other stuff and I’m just so overwhelmed.
However, when we’re all settled into the car on Christmas Eve to drive halfway across the country, I’ll be really happy about going to see family. Christmas itself I enjoy - just all the prep work has me teetering on the brink. It’s all very bipolar, so I voted other.
Christmas isn’t a negative for me, most of my Christmases with my family and especially during my childhood were quite nice. But now I am too old and cynical and haven’t had a pleasant or worthwhile Christmas in at least a decade, maybe two. It’s great for kids, but I do not have any, so it’s just a day when the shops are shut.
After we stopped buying presents for Christmas, we started having fun again. I’m all about the food and the baking and decorating. Eliminating gifts, boxes, wrapping paper and bows made things a lot less hectic.
I have lots of good memories of Christmas from years past, but mostly it just feels like a massive chore and I feel a huge sense of obligation to do Christmas right. Then I get overwhelmed and just don’t want to do any of it and hate feeling like it’s being crammed down my throat.
I put up a tree this year because I love the smell of it, and I do lights on my house, so I like some of the trappings, but I don’t feel a need to do a lot. I suck at shopping, so would like to avoid the whole gift giving obligation - I don’t want anything, and can’t think of anything anyone else wants or needs. Except for the dogs. They’ll get gifts.
My family is all too far away to visit, so while there is a small pang of missing them, there is also relief at not having to endure yet another dysfunctional family Christmas. I spent years dashing here and there for events and dinners, but the last few years, I have chosen to do nothing and go nowhere. I am not one of those people who feels lonely at Christmas, and I enjoy the day with just me and the dogs, doing whatever I want and drinking champagne for breakfast.
You know about the whole Northern vs. Southern Hemisphere thing, right?
Warm and cozy. We always have a get-together with my family on my dad’s side on Christmas day, with my aunts and uncles and cousins. Good food, good booze, good times, I even like Christmas music. Plus when we bring out the Christmas decorations, it’s fun to see stuff from when I was a kid. (We don’t put up our good ornaments now, since our cat Annie started going after the tree, but one thing I’ve always LOVED to do while sitting in the living room was looking at the tree and searching for different ornaments.)
I guess I just have a lot of good memories and traditions associated with Christmas.
What I DON’T like is when they start rolling out Christmas decorations and commercials at the stores in October. Forget the War On Christmas, I say there’s a War On Thanksgiving, dammit!!!
October? Where I work, all that stuff is out on the floor in September. One year, not too long ago, all the Xmas trees were set up the day after Labour Day, and the rest of the decorations weren’t far behind.
Sorry, Thanksgiving was vanquished years ago, and Hallowe’en is under siege.
I have great memories of Christmas from childhood. My mom loved Christmas, so the house was always decorated, we had all sorts of holiday treats, Christmas carols and movies played a lot, and she prided herself on being able to find those hard-to-find gifts I wanted and surprise me with them. I can’t think of one negative childhood memory about the holiday season.
Which is why I’m not exactly sure why nowadays I just consider it to be a big inconvenience. I like the music and sometimes watch the specials–I don’t hate it or anything–but we don’t decorate, we barely buy each other presents (we don’t have kids, and usually just buy what we want for ourselves when we want something). The spouse isn’t that jazzed about seeing his family, and my parents are both gone (my dad died on Christmas morning two years ago, though I felt the same way about the holiday season even before that). I hate crowds. The only thing I enjoy about it is getting some time off, which is nice. The most fun I’ve had so far this year was helping to pick out gifts for the families the spouse’s work group is sponsoring.
All in all, I’ll be happy when the whole thing’s over for another year and life can return to normal again.
I voted “other” as Christmas kind of leaves me cold. I am pretty much “meh” about the whole thing - I like the idea of it, I like the good feeling and the atmosphere but I hate the commercialism, the crowds, the idiocy of people claiming their festive season is ruined because they can’t find the right sort of cranberry sauce in the shops…
I have good memories of Christmas growing up, we had good times as a family but now that I’m an adult with no kids of my own, there just doesn’t seem so much point to it all. I’m not a believer either so the religious message of the season bypasses me completely.
Since my father died (30 years ago), my mum hasn’t felt the same about Christmas as his death was early January and he had been ill for quite a bit of the Christmas holiday. This year she is staying at home and sharing Christmas day lunch with friends (she lives in sheltered housing), and I will be several thousand miles away in Vegas. She is quite happy to be at home and doesn’t mind spending most of the day on her own, she’s quite happy for me to go on holiday especially as last year she had a fall on 21st December and I spent my christmas break driving backwards and forwards from my home to hers, the hospital and trying to deal with my own health issues as I had a chest infection and couldn’t find time to get to see my own doctor.
Getting time off is a bonus as I work in education and our institution closes for 10 days so I get a nice long break.
Ok, let me rephrase. If it wasn’t an extremely difficult option to pull of. I can’t hide in my house alone, in silence, from Thanksgiving to New Years, ignoring the world. I have to go to work, where people are talking about it, where the public wishes me a Merry Christmas. I have to go to the grocery store and do my general shopping where music is playing. I turn on the computer, radio or the TV for news or other entertainment and you have holiday themed shows, commercials, and discussions. Then there are the family and friends who send cards and still expect me to show up for holiday events.
Something about how toilets flush?
Christmas reminds me of how unwelcome people who’s families were never christian are in this country. That said, the holiday my dysfunctional family used to pretend to celebrate sucks too - at least it serves as a far too rare reminder that I have nothing.
Pretty much what Octarine said, minus Mariah Carey.
Even if I didn’t like it, I’d appreciate the time off.
I miss my Mom more than at any other time of the year plus the days are too damn short but, in general, I enjoy it for the music and because we turn the corner and head towards spring.
not a Christian but I get a big feeling of awe and joy and celebration with the music. 
gigi - Here’s the thing. I don’t mind that Western culture considers Christianity a huge deal. It is. You can argue whether it deserves this status, but there’s really no denying two millennia of recorded history. What bugs me is the incredible, overblown, wretched-excess obsession with the birth of Christ, by far the least impressive thing he ever did. I mean, this is someone who openly defied the most powerful religious and political power structures of the day, brought together a group of fanatically loyal followers (all of whom had pretty good lives at the time he met them) to spread his astoundingly radical teachings, and treated ALL people as equals…oh yeah, and halted a raging thunderstorm, multiplied loaves and fishes, healed incurable diseases, brought a man back from the frickin’ dead, etc., etc…and all we care about is he got squeezed out of a womb? Something literally every single person who was ever alive can claim? Even that weirdo hippie Saint Francis deserves better than that.
Drunky Smurf - Look, I am not in the mood for this crap right now, so I’ll just ask a simple, honest question: What the hell kind of point are you trying to make here?? (For the record, the only appreciable change in attitude I notice in December is that a certain subset is somewhat more irritating than usual. Most, but not all, bible thumpers.)
Half the family octrazices me, I ignore the other half. Im an atheist that enjoys everyone else’s Christmas spirit and turkey