Why do we feel the need to celebrate things on an annual basis?
I mean, I guess I can see highlighting one’s own birthday but, other than that, what’s the point?
How many Thankgivings must we endure? How many President’s Day’s? How many Christmas’ (although, that’s just a birthday celebration for someone else who’s been dead for over 2,000 years)?
It seems silly that, just about once a month, there’s some sort of anniversary that must be acknowledged.
Why the need to celebrate these things? Or is it peer pressure?
Omnipresent-I totally agree with you. I would like to see all the halmark holidays disappear with a magical wave of the hand. I mean Grandmother’s Day? Why not fill up the calender with pointless celebrations to dilute any real meaning from any of the celebrations?
Holidays help bring societies together. When Americans celebrate Veteran’s and Memorial Day, or Australians celebrate ANZAC Day, they are, as nations, remembering the sacrifices that their fellow nationals made in battle. In America, Thanksgiving and the Fourth of July reinforce the American myths of their own founding. Passover for Jews, Easter for Christians, and Ramadan for Muslims all bring believers together, all over the world, celebrating their common religious beliefs and confirming their religious identity. In a few weeks, on September 11, America is going to have a new holiday, to remember those people who died last year, and that brings us together too.
A culture’s holidays help make and keep together the culture.
Holidays aren’t about their significance to each individual. They’re mostly about the tradition behind them and what they mean to the participants. For many people, holidays are opportunities to spend time with family and loved ones, acknowle someone’s accomplishments, eat a good dinner, give each other gifts, receive gifts, buy cards, and spend money on themselves or one another.
Maybe it’s just me, but I also acknowledge holidays out of pleasure and gratitude that I have lived to see another one go by. I’m not terminally ill (knock on wood) or anything; I just appreciate my life.
It’s not something people do mindlessly. And it’s not the result of peer pressure. No one’s holding a gun to your head and yelling “BE MERRY!” in your ear. You’re free to not participate if you don’t want to.
I take it you don’t like holidays and think of them as something to “endure”?
(1) It gives people an excuse to take time off from work.
(2) It gives people a chance to socialize with family members. Thanksgiving and Christmas are usually the only time I get to see my Aunts/Uncles/Cousins. Without those holidays, I’d never see them.
I think that once is a year is about as much as we can take, and as much as we need. I can’t imagine having Christmas every seven months, for instance. If we lived on Venus (1 year = 243 Earth days) we’d probably celebrate many holidays every other year. If we lived on Mars (687 Earth days) we’d probably have to add a few holidays.
it think it also has to do with the origins of ‘holiday’. most early holy days/ mass celebrations marked an important event like beginning of harvest, end of harvest, astronomic convergence which coincided with important harvest time, etc.
It’s not something people do mindlessly. And it’s not the result of peer pressure. No one’s holding a gun to your head and yelling “BE MERRY!” in your ear. You’re free to not participate if you don’t want to. **
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Well, it may not be peer pressure but, I’ll bet most people would feel slighted if their husband/wife, boyfriend/girlfriend doesn’t “give them anything” on their birthday.
I think it is mindless to some extent. We feel we must or else be outcast. “What do you mean you’re not coming over for Thansgiving dinner? Do you have other plans somewhere?”. “No, I just thought I’d rent a movie or something”. “Hmmmm, something’s not right with that person.”
I mean, you can have a good meal any day of the year. Keeping societies together? Sheesh, there are some societies that could use a good seperation.
If one day of the year is the only time that you see a certain relative, my feeling is that there isn’t much room in your life for that relative during the year.
I’m just saying, if one wants to celebrate a great or even insignificant event, great. But, to celebrate it one year exactly after that date again, and then the next year, and the next, hundreds of years down the road… It’s lost on me.
Omnipresent & Meatros, I agree with you two. Holidays are supposed to bring us together, perhaps. But they have become so commercialized as to have lost all meaning. Easter, Christmas, Mother & Fathers days, birthdays, and even ‘minor holidays’ like Valentine’s Day and Halloween are just another excuse for Hallmark and the malls to get rich. Christmas is the worst- it should be a time of family and togetherness; instead it is a stressful period of shopping in crowded stores, searching for increasingly scarce parking, and worrying about bills and what to get whom. Pardon me if I am sounding like the Grinch, but there is so much stress around Xmas that there is no time to just sit back and enjoy it. I, for one, would like to take Xmas ‘off,’ but then all my friends and family would disdain me for not buying gifts. Perhaps we need the Grinch to show us again the True Meaning of the holidays. IMHO, the only holiday that remains close to its original intention is Thanksgiving- It’s still about getting together with your family and having a great meal. (And please, all you PC thugs, don’t start about the oppression of Native Americans by early American settlers…)
There is a certain amount of societal expectations about our holiday behavior. After my parents died, Mr. Ruby and I began to celebrate Thanksgiving at a local restaurant. The rest of the family thought we were “missing something” and felt sorry for us. They couldn’t understand how just being together was the most wonderful thing that we could have had.
Before you give up celebrating the holidays because of “peer pressure”, try to get in touch with the real meaning behind the celebration. They aren’t just another day off work, or another boring day with the family. If you understand the history, the beginnings, of the celebration, I believe you’ll be more receptive to the reason for the holiday.
It’s only August, and I’m already looking longingly toward the cupboard that I know contains my Christmas decorations (and better still, Christmas CDs). If Christmas only came every four years, I’d be putting the decos up whenever the mood took me. I couldn’t wait four years for another Christmas!
I really only celebrate Easter and Christmas (and birthdays, Father’s Day and Mother’s Day). I don’t do anything special for the other days, but if other people want to celebrate them I really don’t care.
I wonder if the yearly tradition of birthdays grew popular for small children, say, in the 17th, 18th or 19th (or even earlier?) centuries because the infant mortality rate was high?
IMHO, it’s important to celebrate birthdays because YOU get your own day. People are nice to you, do special favours for you… all you have to do is utter those special words - “I’m the birthday boy/girl”. It’s nice to have all that fuss and attention.
I’m with Meatrosp, Omni and Anoma-something: If it’s worth celebrating, you should be able to celebrate it any time, not just on one certain day. If you want to celebrate with other people, however, there needs to be a commonly agreed upon date so it doesn’t stretch over the period of a month or week waiting for everyone to get their act together. Or perhaps every holiday could follow the Mardi Gras/Ramadan/Lent examples and each holiday is spread over 2-4 weeks, making sure that it gets good and celebrated. Who’s in?
Life is nothing but a series of cycles. jb_farley noted that many of the holidays are actually celebrating important events in the year when certain parts of the cycle are repeated. Do you totally ignore the leafs changing or the dogwoods blooming? Maybe we don’t celebrate the full moon every month, but somewhere at our most basic being we recognize it.
[sup]It was the Grinch that had the problem, not the Who’s down in Whoville.[/sup]
Dang, who whizzed in your coco puffs? I’m glad others don’t think like that. “Let us commemorate this wonderful whatever by never remembering it again!”
Jesus was born. Ok, as a Christian, I appreciate the significance of that event. I don’t see how one is less Christian-like (in accordance with the bible) if one doesn’t even acknowledge December 25th. I know this is probably incomprehensible to some but, I’m not talking about what Jesus was to humanity, I’m talking about a birthday. If you’re a person who’s husband or wife died 25 years ago, do you have some sort of party on the deceased’s birthday? Probably not. If anything, they probably mark the deathday and not the birthday.
On December 25th, I can see going to church and reflecting on the significance of the birth of the person being honored. But, what that has to do with buying my boss a bottle of whiskey and sticking a bug infested tree in my living room, I have know idea!!!
[sup]It was the Grinch that had the problem, not the Who’s down in Whoville.[/sup]