Do you hate Christmas?

[Not_Punny]

Christmas is my second fav holiday.

Ho, ho, ho.

 

[flame boy]

I've got enough irritating Christmas cheer for everyone to share. Feel free to suck it from me, ahem.

 

[luka82]

I will eat a pig for Xmas, happy day

 

[hot-rod]

Don't believe in the whole Christmas story....I believe the whole thing is a lie.

 

[Industrialsize]

Being a non christian(buddhist) I'm ambivalent around Christmas. It bothers me, a little, when people wish me a Merry Christmas without even thinking that I may not be a Christian. I know they're just being nice.

 

[curioustitan]

I honestly think I hate Christmas. I will qualify that and say I hate American Christmas because I've spent Christmas in other countries and they don't seem to celebrate with the same vigor that Americans seem to. My top ten reasons that I hate Christmas:

10. Shopping and the presumption that I need to get everyone gifts.
10. Agree

9. The presumption that even if I declare that I'm not giving gifts, those who give me a gift deserve to get one back anyway.
9. Agree

8. Christmas songs - even if you really love the the tunes, why do the airwaves of every public space need to be flooded by them? This can include as a subcategory of special Christmas albums by celebrities.
8. Does the soundtrack to "Love Actually" count? Because i'm not ready to give that one up yet :wink: (i still play it, even a few years after the movie and when i'm feeling 'sappy' and sentimental...which is quite often actually.

7. Traffic around shopping centers (essentially all main thoroughfares) is horrible for a month. Do morons only drive during the weeks before Christmas?
7. No. Morons drive constantly...it's the influx of additional morons from neighbouring towns, cities, countries etc visiting friends and family that you're noticing

6. The guilt I'm to feel for not having the perfect Norman Rockwell holiday with my parents, grandparents, wife and kids.
6. I feel emancipated from silly traditions honestly...my family can have them. That being said, I would,howeve, like to have someone to myself to share Christmas with quite honestly...someone who'll make all the madness a little more bearable, but until then, i guess i'll just have to grin and bear it.

5. Romantic movies that make people feel like losers for not having found someone "special" in their life.
5. Oh my God, i've gotta go and see that...no seriously! I'm sorry but movies like that are the only reasons i look forward to Christmas. I usually attend a few family functions for brief moments (yes, much like a celebrity, i show up, sign a few autographs and leave inconspicuously) and sneak off to go and watch whatever romcom or Christmas'y' type movie is on or the latest Twilight installment...whatever.

4. Christmas parties...especially the ones that I don't want to attend but it will look bad if I don't go. I've held parties for the past 10 years, this year I quit.
5. Shit! Not again. We have a lift club for our staff members and every year, i don't get to drink as i always have to drive our inebriated yobs home and listen to how much they love everybody and really didn't mean any of the little 'nasties' that may or may not have done the rounds, courtesy of their loose tongues throughout the year... soooo looking forward to it this year at:

3. Christmas cards - why bother? Most just sign their name after a pre-written Hallmark sentiment. That goes double for virus-inflicting e-cards.
3. Agreed...i'm still looking for that thoughtful "you're a douche-bag" hallmark card.

2. Christmas television commercials. Why the fuck do I need White Diamonds perfume or a watch from Kay Jewelers?
2. 'Dahling'... anybody who's anybody has White Diamonds...don't you know?

2. Christmas decorations - just because plastic inflatable yard decorations are on sale at Walmart doesn't mean you have to buy them (all).
2. I don't do decorations. Period. (Which is not to say that my over-zealous family don't..............................)

1. Christmas and seasonal sweaters. Ya I know tacky sweater parties were all a silly rage a few years ago...but we have all moved on...haven't we?
1. It's Summer here over the festive season...beach weather all December long...sweaters are a definite no-no!

I have nothing against spending quality "family time" with my siblings and parents, albeit brief on Christmas Day. I have no problem being thankful for what I have in life, but I'm annoyed with the Christmas ritual dogma that serves to make us all buy, give, listen, rush, eat, mail, and decorate ourselves into happiness...or at least an implied normalcy. And if you don't buy into it all, some people really give you grief for it.

Is anyone else ready to fast-forward to New Years? Or...am I alone in setting myself to be visited by three ghosts tonight? Help me here - what is there to like about it anymore?
Just as long as i manage to get that movie in (Love & other drugs) i'm right there with you.:biggrin1:

Bah-humbug to Christmas.

.....and a happy new year!!!!

 

[B_subgirrl]

I love Christmas!!!

I only have three people to buy for but we spend a lot on each other - and love spending every cent! It DOES get stressful trying to think of the PERFECT presents for everybody, but it's worth it when they open them on Xmas day.

I do hate the carols playing everywhere, but I love to watch the carols on TV when I'm wrapping the last presents and trying to get the cooking done on Xmas Eve.

And I've NEVER sent a Xmas card.

 

[BadBoyCanada]

I LOVE Christmas.

Start listening to the music after Remembrance Day. Decorated the exterior of my house already (but living in a Northern climate, you try to avoid frost bite weather to do so).

Why do I love Christmas?
1) It tends to put people in a better mood.
2) Get togethers with friends and family you have little time to se rest of the year.
3) Charlie Brown Christmas!
4) Shopping. Locally, Saturday evenings tend to be quieter in the malls. Roaming, seeing decorations, meeting people I haven't seen in awhile.
5) I love Christmas music. I have a Christmas CD fetish, which perplexes my wife.
6) I enjoy buying gifts for my parents, kids and nieces and nephews. Even in a World where kids have everything, movie passes, Amazon/Apple Gift cards, etc. are still appreciated.
7) The Christmas story still gives us hope, whether your a believer or not.
8) The Grinch who stole Christmas (both versions), A Christmas Story (Red Rider BB Gun :biggrin1, Christmas Vacation (its a tradition) and Frosty/Rudolph and did I mention Charlie Brown?
9) Christmas baking!
10) Christmas Eve wine and sex. Especially this year, since my wife had surgery that put me on ice for the last 12 weeks and not again until December 22.
11) Christmas eve radio. Only time commercial radio is ad free!
12) We shut down between Christmas and New Years. Only time I take off work guilt free. I have vacations, but coming back is a bitch.
13) I have kids, so my wife and I don't buy for each other very often. Its about the only time I can spoil her with gifts.

I went to Walt Disney World last year and attended the Epcot Christmas story with a live Orchestra, choir and Edward James Olmos. Simply amazing.

 

[B_Hickboy]

I don't hate Christmas. I own it. Nobody can take it away from me.

 

[Endued]

I can never, ever fathom how the reasons people state for disliking Christmas are anything other than minor annoyances.

To inject some positivity, I like Christmas because (in no particular order):

1. Time off work. Woo!
2. Perfectly okay to increase your weekly alcohol intake ten-fold.
3. Christmas dinner with family (those you don't get to see often as well).
4. Seeing friends you haven't seen for a while (Christmas Eve is pretty much the best night of the year, always a laugh).
5. Exchanging gifts.
6. Decorations. The gaudier the better!
7. Loads of feel-good films on the telly-box.

It's the best time of the year! You curmudgeons don't know what's good for you, I swear.

 

[joe bltsflk]

I don't hate it, I just ignore it (as much as possible, anyway).

 

[zpacifico]

I love it ... it's all about consumption and camp decorations! ;þ

 

[601900]

I LOVE Christmas!

I don't spend a lot of money in gifts,i don't see why a should,a card,a call makes me very happy and i know it makes all my loved ones too.

I love the smell.

The mood.

The decorations too,that has to be one of my favorite parts.

Come Christmas time i'm like a little kid again, love it and always will!.

 

[DiscoBoy]

I try not to, but I always find myself a little upset and annoyed come Christmas.

I love the idea of gift-giving, though.

 

[vince]

As Tiny Tim said... God Bless you eXYZ!

I loved it as a kid and I loved it even more when our kid was a kid. We had some extremely good times with family and friends. I never worked a day between Xmas and New Year's Day and we often would get some ski days in at Whistler or Big White. One year I remember, 1998. we had a rare White Christmas and the whole city of Vancouver was snowed in and shut down for days. Our neighbors and us walked down to the village center and rented every movie available and traded them back and forth. We spent five or six days just being cozy watching videos and eating and having fun. The season always ended with us going a community party up the coast that lasts for two days and winds up on the 1st with about a hundred people having a bonfire on the beach were the creek empties in to the sea. We get loaded and make little boats and set candles in them and float them down the creek and watch them go out to sea. Sickening isn't it? :tongue:

I hate the commercial side of the holiday and the Cola-Cola Santa's and most of the music. But done well, it is good for the soul.

Since those days I've been pretty ambivalent about it. I live in place where Dec 25 is just another day and we work. But this year I am flying home for Christmas in Canada for the first time in 6 years and it's gonna be a blast!

 

[SilverTrain]

I honestly think I hate Christmas. I will qualify that and say I hate American Christmas because I've spent Christmas in other countries and they don't seem to celebrate with the same vigor that Americans seem to. My top ten reasons that I hate Christmas:

10. Shopping and the presumption that I need to get everyone gifts.
9. The presumption that even if I declare that I'm not giving gifts, those who give me a gift deserve to get one back anyway.
8. Christmas songs - even if you really love the the tunes, why do the airwaves of every public space need to be flooded by them? This can include as a subcategory of special Christmas albums by celebrities.
7. Traffic around shopping centers (essentially all main thoroughfares) is horrible for a month. Do morons only drive during the weeks before Christmas?
6. The guilt I'm to feel for not having the perfect Norman Rockwell holiday with my parents, grandparents, wife and kids.
5. Romantic movies that make people feel like losers for not having found someone "special" in their life.
4. Christmas parties...especially the ones that I don't want to attend but it will look bad if I don't go. I've held parties for the past 10 years, this year I quit.
3. Christmas cards - why bother? Most just sign their name after a pre-written Hallmark sentiment. That goes double for virus-inflicting e-cards.
2. Christmas television commercials. Why the fuck do I need White Diamonds perfume or a watch from Kay Jewelers?
2. Christmas decorations - just because plastic inflatable yard decorations are on sale at Walmart doesn't mean you have to buy them (all).
1. Christmas and seasonal sweaters. Ya I know tacky sweater parties were all a silly rage a few years ago...but we have all moved on...haven't we?

I have nothing against spending quality "family time" with my siblings and parents, albeit brief on Christmas Day. I have no problem being thankful for what I have in life, but I'm annoyed with the Christmas ritual dogma that serves to make us all buy, give, listen, rush, eat, mail, and decorate ourselves into happiness...or at least an implied normalcy. And if you don't buy into it all, some people really give you grief for it.

Is anyone else ready to fast-forward to New Years? Or...am I alone in setting myself to be visited by three ghosts tonight? Help me here - what is there to like about it anymore?

Bah-humbug to Christmas.

Aw, poor Zed!

What does it mean that I hate all those things, too, but I still love Christmas?

Except for the Christmas parties one. I love Christmas parties, but I happen to think that my friends throw kick-ass Christmas parties.

I'm the irritating annoying optimist?

Oh, and I've never sent Christmas cards! I'm that person.

Lol at petite. I never send Christmas cards either, so you're not the only one.

And like Ms. petite, I love me some Christmas party. Lots of Holly Jolly good cheer, good food, good booze. A bit of frivolity under the mistletoe. Good stuff, in my experience.

As to xyz's laments, I am always empathetic to antipathy toward a holiday or tradition. IMO, Halloween is okay, but some people think it is the GREATEST THING EVER, and they spend more money on Halloween than all the other holidays combined. New Year's Eve is "Rookie Night", Easter = Christian stuff that has floated way into the background of the chocolate bunny egg parade (wtf?). Don't even get me started on Mother's Day or Father's Day, two holidays created by a greeting card company.

I do like Thanksgiving, for much the same reasons I like Christmas. Since I was young, I've had positive experiences on those days, bonding with close and extended family members and friends over food, games, drink and football games on the tube in the background. It's a comforting, very human experience to gather with friends and loved ones in a warm place during the cold season, and (figuratively) embrace each other. Without that positive bonding experience, one is left with only the hassle and the commercialism. And I can definitely identify with getting frustrated over that.

I hate the mall/shopping center gridlock.

I do like the gift giving (I get pleasure out of shopping for just the right gifts for my close loved ones). I seem to have reached a place in my emotional development at which I just don't get hung up on who needs to give a gift to to whom. I give to whom I want. Whomever I get from is A-Okay.

I've also developed a commercialism screening filter, whereby I can tune out commercials, in-store displays, etc.

I dig the music, but wish they'd play a bigger variety on the radio (there's lots of good stuff in the archives, but the playlists stick closely to a few dozen "favorites").

I've always hated sweaters of all kinds, the lone exception being a very fine quality, very lightweight charcoal cashmere, cut narrowly.*

My guiding theory: hanging for extended periods with the family is why God invented booze. :wink:


* Santa, take note. :biggrin1:

 

[rbkwp]

Without being a killjoy
decided way back,every day was Xmas,
so when That day came along
well ..
same ole, cept i do get a buzz at the buildup & excitement with the kids looking fwd to it all.
(fraid we have conditioned them? ha)
great excuse to be XTRA happy for a day or 2, ha

as for Christmas, and all the razzamatazz, welll have failed him twice, so trying to avoid him and it all these days?
enz

 

[B_big_dick18]

i hate christmas its the worse holiday ever designed so the government can get u to buy stuff and take your money.......and what i dont get is y do people expect gifts its JESUS birthday not yours lol

 

[Catchoftheday]

I love Christmas!!!

.

I LOVE Christmas.

.

Just sod off

I don't hate Christmas. I own it. Nobody can take it away from me.

I hope you don't need me to tell you where to put it

 

[bigbull29]

I just can't wait to it passes. I don't like any holidays.

I hate it when people turn on the TV to watch sports on a holiday. That irritates me!

People can really lose their wits over the holidays (irrational people get even more irrational), which scares me at time, showing me how our environment/society can have such a profound effect on our mental states.

I prefer to spend Christmas outside of North America, as I did once in Australia (much more enjoyable as it's not as commercialized, etc).

There is nothing wrong with someone if they don't like Christmas/holidays. You don't like it, you don't like. It doesn't reflect at all on someone's true character. That is just silly!