Not much. Didn’t grow up with it, and trying to celebrate it when I’m older without kids or parents is weird. It’s time off work for me and not much more.

Capitalist holiday preserved by corporate to sell shit

I very much hate christmas. Having a specific day to give everyone something is stupid. We already have everything we want (that’s not too expensive to be a gift), and even if there’s something special, christmas ruins it by being expected. In my family we finally managed to drop the charade after grandma died. Sadly, gonna be celebrating christmas with my GF’s family, and so far I’ve been unsuccessful in making them understand that I don’t want shit from them.

Christmas is just a giant collection of obligations that leaves us all worse off. Like getting and advent calendar, everyone gets mad when I skip days, just because I don’t care about Christmas. In my country we also have 3 days where all stores are closed for it. Great shit…

I love Christmas, and Thanksgiving. Opportunities to spend quality time with family are hard to come by these days, but it’s just as important as ever. I also like the core message of “the holiday spirit”, but not the gross consumerism it has been turned into. Love your brethren, peace on earth, and all that good old fashioned shit. Fuck yeah!

Of course it’s a very hard time of year for people without family or loved ones, and for people with emotional issues. I sympathize with those people. I’ve been one of those people at various points of my life. My mom gets super depressed every Christmas because it reminds her of a bunch of shit I don’t want to share on Lemmy. So I’m sorry that it’s hard for you. You do matter. Merry Christmas.

I don’t really enjoy the holidays. It’s too much stress, too many conflicting family obligations, too much effort dodging the religious aspects, too much forced cheer, and it all just makes me sad. Marginally I like putting up a tree, but after a couple of weeks I get tired of remembering to water it. I skip as much of the holidays as I can, and try to enjoy the small parts that don’t annoy me.

I still enjoy Christmas but there is a bittersweet element now due to loss, experience and outgrowing the magic. The values of cherishing family, friends and community are still important but I don’t make myself a wreck for the season.

I do what feels good and reasonable. That varies each year with my situation. It’s normal and not something to worry about. I’m a real person. I don’t exist in an advert so I don’t try to live like that.

As long as I can sit at the table with my loved ones and share the traditional meals then it is enough. I don’t need gifts or lavish parties. I also only give gifts when it feels right to me.

My country is small and we have Boxing Day so I don’t suffer the travel stress that Americans do. Maybe I would give up on Christmas if I had to deal with that. (Boxing Day should be a human right… ha ha)

Unlike another poster, I like that most stores are closed. I like the idea of everyone having time off together. I do get the poster’s sentiment though. I once felt that way. It can be really inconvenient if an unexpected need pops up.

I don’t like how commercialised Christmas has become but I mostly don’t let that influence me. A pet peeve of mine is Christmas advertising starting months early. It makes the season stale so I avoid the ads as much as I can and I don’t start listening to Christmas music until the weekend before the big day.

No, I hate Christmas with a passion. Despite having pagan roots, the modern version is a BS Christo-capitalist holiday. All it does is remind me (and others like me) how much our families hate us and how much this country sucks. This year is especially bad, since we’re a month out from a fascist takeover that threatens to genocide us.

Fake Christmas cheer is sickening

christmas to me means moving on to become a better and happier person, spending time with family that visits town, realizing i still have time left to turn my life around. good feelings but also very nostalgic, thank you for the question!!!

None of these holidays have any meaning.

Time off work with holiday pay, If you’re lucky.

Otherwise it’s a capitalism thing to buy stuff to make companies money.

No. My mom has always worked holidays, and so have I (once I was old enough). We would celebrate around it, but pulled back as I got older. I’m at a job that’s just closed this holiday, and it’s just a day off for me. 🤷🏿‍♀️

I used to has Xmas after becoming an adult because what it stood for, for me, was a bunch of shit : capitalism, using a fake demi god to discipline your kids, and a zombie demi god it’s supposed to be dedicated to when we decorate trees which come from the religions that were stomped into hiding.

But I started to realize that winter fucking sucks. It’s depressing as fuck. It made me realize that we need holidays in the winter to help us get through it. There is joy in company if you can look past minor shit and flaws of family, and if you can’t then there is the company of friends. Holidays are a reminder that we thrive best in communities and it’s a chance to reconnect.

So whether you decide to celebrate that gathering by decorating a plastic tree or by having a hedonistic feast or even an orgy, do something for the holidays that mean something to you.

Divorced parents. A latter childhood of “equal time” over the holidays. Hoopla so forced and weird, it was a caricature of itself.

No, I really avoid a lot of the hoopla in Christmas and everything else. And I like quiet celebrations at home. My best Christmas was my first year H1B-ing in Jersey and my gf came to visit all the way from home. No money, with her tuition and schooling so high, we sat around and watched TV and journeyed over the PATH to see the sights. It was magical (because she is).

Stress.

Stress about all the money spent on a midnight feast that we’re too sleepy and tired to enjoy (our Christmas meal here is at 12mn, it cannot start earlier), the gifts and decorations, and the electricity of all the RGB lights strung around to make our family to be “with the community spirit”. Stress about not having the energy to be able to smile and be cheerful all the time, or else you’d be the subject of dinner conversations, how you’re not “making an effort to spread the holiday spirit”. And worst of all, the stress of not being able to sleep and rest due to all the merrymaking, singing, and overall noisemaking (fireworks tend to be fired at random here, and increasing in frequency as it draws closer to the end of December).

I used to look forward to the food, the seasonal food, and the feasting. But now that I’ve got to prepare all that food, taste it, make adjustments based on who is going to be coming for the Christmas dinner, it’s just draining.

What is supposed to be a season to be merry, to be hopeful, and all that good cheer, has become the very cause of all the sorry hopelessness and drear.

I won’t lie, usually Christmas is my favorite time of year. Something about the music, getting to see all my family, and trying to find inventive ways to make friends and family happy through gifts always cheers me up. Never really had the money to go all out, but the spirit was there.

This year I just do not care. Usually I listen to dozens of hours of Christmas music and this year it is less than 2 hours so far. I’m not looking forward to giving or receiving gifts; it just feels so formulaic and rabidly consumerist. My usual comfort movies hold no interest for me. I’d skip it if I could. And all of that was before my grandmother died this past Saturday.