Christmas Analysis

Christmas is one of the most confusing holidays, historically.  For the ignorant masses its a holiday about gift giving and santa, and somehow Jesus fits into this with santa claus.  In reality its not known weather or not Jesus was born on december 25th but around that time is the winter solstice which the pagans would celebrate.  In an effort to appeal to the pagans the christian missionaries promised them an equally joyous celebration around the same time, Jesus is the cover up for this.  Santa was an invention of the Coca Cola company which markets heavily around the holidays, Santa's story has been elaborated over the years by many many poorly written christmas specials and movies.

The idea behind christmas is that we come together by giving each other gifts.  This, like black friday and thanksgiving are tools to increase spending and fuel the economy.  However this can take away from personal connections because instead of giving gifts to those you love, you end up getting gifts for everyone just because you're obligated to and making people happy becomes a chore.  In other words, in our society to make someone happy at christmas time you have to spend tons of money, tons of time figuring out what they want and waiting in lines, and tons of effort trying to find their gift which is always remarkably sold out in most stores, do this for each family member and you'll get tired of making people happy.

On the flip side we're conditioned to expect gifts and expect that tons of stuff will make us happy, the company of someone else or their friendship doesn't cut it anymore, we have to have expensive and hard to find gifts from those people, pushing your loved ones to spend money on you and waste time in ridiculous lines.  Between shopping and having christmas specials and christmas ads shoved down our throats we have no time for actual personal connection until christmas day.  Even on christmas day our joy comes from some expensive item that we've sub-consciously forced someone to get us.

Not that I don't love christmas, all the points I made above referred to the majority of ignorant Americans that don't know the true meaning of christmas and don't care as long they get something shiny.  Christmas can be salvaged by individualizing it.  Most cultural blunders come from following the stupid traditions of someone else.  If its doesn't make sense to chop down a tree and put lights on it just to throw it out, then don't do, personalize your christmas so that its not all about having to get gifts for people, celebrate with the ones you love, take a break from school or work and maybe get your family and yourself a little reward.  Christmas is a valuable break from the work we're obligated to do so why not enjoy it.