In recent years I've started reflecting and I've come to the conclusion that - in my opinion that most people will not share - Christmas is dumb. Think about it:
1. It's got nothing to do with Jesus anymore. Ask any historian and they will tell you we have no clue of when Jesus of Nazareth (a real historical person) was born, and the late-December holiday was borrowed from other religions for convenience.
2. Feeling obligated to come up with a gift idea, then find the time to buy it, and you might not really be in a position to afford all the gifts, and the recipient might not like it one bit anyway. What a waste of society's resources.
3. Christmas lunches and dinners and feeling obligated to eat too much and then 'work it off' in a new year's resolution. What a waste of food and cooking time.
4. Lying to children that there is a figure who monitors their behaviour and delivers gifts, not their hard-working parents. There is a lot of associated rigmarole of making sure a kid who believes in Santa doesn't find out from adults or other kids. And then they have to find out eventually. And then we wonder why kids have trust issues and don't listen to their parents.
5. How some people are only able to take time off work at Christmas, and the whole country shutting down for weeks on end. Why not make it easier for people to take annual leave throughout the year and not shut the whole show down for two weeks or a month? It's unbalanced, inconvenient when operations are reduced or nil, and leads to a lot of preventable stress in the lead-up to Christmas.
I get that it boosts the retail economy temporarily, but what about the enormous dead weight of the difference between what the gift-givers paid and what the receivers would have paid for the goods? Every other benefit that Christmas brings (giving gifts, seeing loved ones, making kids happy and eating food) can happen on any other day of the year. Putting it all in one holiday period is unbalanced and silly.
I don't hate Christmas per se. I think we can observe a nice Christmas festival without all the dumb aspects outlined above. But if Christmas completely died out as a custom in Australia, I honestly would not miss it one bit.
1. It's got nothing to do with Jesus anymore. Ask any historian and they will tell you we have no clue of when Jesus of Nazareth (a real historical person) was born, and the late-December holiday was borrowed from other religions for convenience.
2. Feeling obligated to come up with a gift idea, then find the time to buy it, and you might not really be in a position to afford all the gifts, and the recipient might not like it one bit anyway. What a waste of society's resources.
3. Christmas lunches and dinners and feeling obligated to eat too much and then 'work it off' in a new year's resolution. What a waste of food and cooking time.
4. Lying to children that there is a figure who monitors their behaviour and delivers gifts, not their hard-working parents. There is a lot of associated rigmarole of making sure a kid who believes in Santa doesn't find out from adults or other kids. And then they have to find out eventually. And then we wonder why kids have trust issues and don't listen to their parents.
5. How some people are only able to take time off work at Christmas, and the whole country shutting down for weeks on end. Why not make it easier for people to take annual leave throughout the year and not shut the whole show down for two weeks or a month? It's unbalanced, inconvenient when operations are reduced or nil, and leads to a lot of preventable stress in the lead-up to Christmas.
I get that it boosts the retail economy temporarily, but what about the enormous dead weight of the difference between what the gift-givers paid and what the receivers would have paid for the goods? Every other benefit that Christmas brings (giving gifts, seeing loved ones, making kids happy and eating food) can happen on any other day of the year. Putting it all in one holiday period is unbalanced and silly.
I don't hate Christmas per se. I think we can observe a nice Christmas festival without all the dumb aspects outlined above. But if Christmas completely died out as a custom in Australia, I honestly would not miss it one bit.