Comradeship // Freechat

I got burnt out on Christmas years ago for several reasons.

One is that the entire culture around Christmas is incredibly stale, almost like it's frozen in time. It feels like nothing ever changes. We're listening to the same Christmas songs our grandparents listened to and the newer stuff isn't really any different from that. Christmas-related media in general always falls back on the same messaging and themes with nothing original going on anymore. It's almost like the entire holiday is stuck in a time capsule.

Another issue is it's become such a consumer-based holiday that it basically serves no cultural purpose anymore and is now devoid of soul. I genuinely think the secularization of the holiday was a bad thing in general not just because it replaced spirituality with consumerism but also because the excuse is that the holiday is now about "spending time with your family"; which is really just an insane thing to say when you think about it because it admits that we don't have time to spend with our families anymore. If we did Christmas wouldn't have been secularized at all but now it basically has to fill a niche that before capitalism would have just been like every day for most people and that's really fucked up.

Then there's the 'Northern Hemisphere' theming problem. I lived in Florida for about 10 years and let me tell you it's impossible to get into the Christmas spirit when it's 95F outside with 85% humidity, clear open skies and a bright blazing Sun, and nothing but green grass and palm trees far as the eye can see while people stroll about in tank tops and jean shorts - none of which fit into the iconography we as a society associate with Christmas. It really just doesn't feel like Christmas if there is no snow for snowball fights or cold weather to justify making a fire and sipping hot chocolate by or a big pine tree to decorate. The absence of all those things we associate with the holiday just presents a jarring effect.

Also related to the consumerism part is how omnipresent it is from the exact microsecond that Halloween ends. This is a common complaint about people who are sick of Christmas: how it gets shoved in our face long before the holiday even comes. 2 out of the 12 months of the year are dedicated to Christmas advertising and that gets extremely old extremely fast. A lot of it starts to bleed over into the January of the next year too which is even worse because then it's like 3 months every year where Christmas is the predominant talking point in our society and it's very easy to get worn out by it.

And in addition to that - and this also ties into the consumerism - is how Christmas is basically a symbol of capitalism now. It's been appropriated by the market to such a degree that it's almost impossible to disassociate it corporate hegemony over our culture. Everywhere it shows up it serves as a constant reminder that corporations control every one and everything and that capitalism is inescapable. As I got older and learned more about the world I went further and further Left in my beliefs until arriving at this point and throughout that journey I was being exposed to the understanding that corporations are evil, that capitalism is ruining my life, etc. and having this annual celebration that basically serves as a Christian Mass but for capital (and which forces itself onto your consciousness even outside of the actual Christmas season, as mentioned in the last paragraph) started really rubbing me the wrong way. This was especially true when I still was a Christian (it hits different when the holiday is important to your religion) but it remains true for me even after my apostasy.

Finally: I'm poor. I've always been poor. I'll probably always be poor. I was born into poverty and I'll likely die in poverty. A holiday centered entirely around gross amounts of spending on luxuries? You can imagine what my Christmas has been like consistently over the years. It didn't start off terrible but it definitely got worse as time went on as the number of gifts receded and so too did the number of gifters. I've barely gotten anything for Christmas the past 10 years or so and I'm honestly fine with that because I can't really afford to get gifts for a lot of people anymore anyway. This is just a "fuck you if you're poor" holiday at the end of it and that understandably doesn't create fond memories or leave a good impression.

Oh and partially related but my birthday is really close to Christmas so that fucked with the amount of gifts I got too which was not fun growing up.

So yeah, I'm pretty much done with Christmas now. I'm completely over it.