ive worked hard on not being generally irritated by christmas (it makes some ppl happy and is a useful reminder of US christian hegemony) but man people who insist "christmas cheer" is universal and like includes everybody get on my nards
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some people need to be further informed about how many supposedly sacred and ancient Christmas traditions are blatant marketing from the last 120 years or so (and mostly from the midcentury)
I've been accused of "stealing Christmas" by Christian family members because we celebrate it and are not Christians.
Pointing out that 90+% of the holiday is either marketing or borrowed from traditions that originally had nothing to do with Christ is met equally with disbelief and shock.
idk man i feel like all i wanted to say was not everyone is comfortable celebrating the birth of christ, a figure in a specific religion which is not everyone's religion
A Hong Kong student today asked me if Jewish people in America celebrate Christmas. I told him it was complicated. He said he’s not Christian but likes the presents so he’s glad we celebrate it here. It’s very non-Jesusy in these parts.
No, you are completely correct and are running up against a very weird mental block that affects a shockingly high number of people raised in the Christian space. They are fine that you have a different religion and all, but when you say that you never had a fucking Christmas tree... hooo boy.
No no, if you’re not aware, the perfect, Platonic Ideal of the Divine lay in wait for all of human history until it finally met the perfect vehicle for its unveiling and dissemination: 20th century American commercialism and consumerism.
Praise the Lord and pass the Black Friday sales. Amen.
that post that was going around a bit ago that was like,
"oh, so what if there was a month completely revolving around and dedicated to christianity?" "that's just december" was too real
My condolences. Xmas hasn't been Xmas since my mom, who loved playing Santa even for adults, passed away 20 years ago. No enjoyment for me at all anymore.
The only thing I'm looking forward to about xmas, aside from it being over, is a xmas horror movie called There's Something In The Barn, about a USian fam that moves to Norway. Their xmas decorating pisses off the local barn elves and it gets really ugly and really funny really quickly
I'm an atheist who was raised as a Baptist and I work retail. The end of the holiday season (end of the 3rd week in January) fucking well can't come fast enough for me. And don't get me started on piped in xmas music. Oh, and "xmas cheer"? That's just marketing.
I rarely think of it as anything other than a family celebration in December. I was raised atheist, barely met any Christians in my life. Pretty much everyone I've known celebrate Christmas. In the UK references to Jesus seem like token gestures and actually taking that seriously would be weird
I love the gift giving and pagan traditions. Couldn't care less about the jesus-y parts. So I've started sending Solstice cards to everyone after I found out that's a thing that exists. Does it piss off my Catholic relatives? Haha, I hope so 😈
Lol like if a relative sent me a solstice card I’d be so confused but I’d still love them just be confused because it’s like it’s a lot of effort into being “different”
I think it is because a lot of people seperate christmas from the religion it came from. The only people I've personally met that have a problem with that way of thinking are religious dogma pushers and enlightened athiests
I’ve mostly made my peace with Christmas, but my patience with the osmotic pressure of Xmas carols coming out of every store, gas pump, and lamppost wears real thin by December 1st.
If it's so universal and benign, why does it bother them if someone chooses not to partake, or even remark on how it objectively permeates the atmosphere? More for you buddy! Kick rocks!
We used to go to church on Christmas Eve (only), and sing carols. And we always went to Revels, which has a lot of Christian music but also other traditions.
Much more about celebrating family and ways of honoring the winter solstice than religion. Good music though.
I’ve got a lot of complicated feelings about it, being emphatically not Christian but still putting up a tree every year. For me, it’s very much a winter solstice/secular holiday but I feel for folks of other faiths living in the US. I mean when push come to shove it’s Jesus’s birthday. Ugh.
Was it you actually that posted Christina Kotchemidova's critical history of American cheerfulness? Not specifically about christmas but definitely applies. It's great. If you want it and can't find it lmk.
what really gets me is people freaking out when i haven't been exposed to specific christmas traditions, ESPECIALLY their favourite christmas movies, like these things are universal cultural reference points and not....yknow...part of a religion that isnt mine!
Maybe it’s become I’m old and around a lot of much younger people, but I never shame anyone for not having seen a TV show or movie. If it’s good enough I’ll pitch it to them, but not as some sort of obligation.
As someone who isn't Jewish, the Pickles family was my first real exposure to Jewish holidays and their meanings/significance. Their Passover episode stands out in my mind
Man I love the Muppets Christmas Carol, but IMO a lot of the joy is predicated on having watched fifteen different adaptations of A Christmas Carol already, which why would you.
I didn't see Muppets Christmas Carol until my late 20s and it's been listed under "Stuff other people yell at you because they like it more than you do and this is somehow socially accepted".
I had literally just thought, man I wish weird medieval guys would post over here more often, she’s got the good shit. And then here you are, and people are coming for you and being weird, and I’m like DON’T DO THAT YOU FOOLS SHE WILL LEAVE and hide with her illuminated manuscripts and whatnot
hahahaha no it's my fault for scrapping with people on bluesky of all places, i was on a 14 hour flight and let my boredom get the better of me unfortunately :')
Sorry if I opened a flood of comments with my side theory on why strangers want you to watch the muppets 😬 I, too, desperately miss the illuminated manuscripts, weird bats, and other bits and bobs that made following you on Twitter delightful
My side theory is that people get really weird about Christmas because we all desperately need, as humans in the darkest time of year, sparkly lights and the things that once brought happiness even if shit was bad, so it’s incomprehensible to some that Christmas traditions aren’t universal.
I can’t speak for everyone but a family celebration with fun lights and gifts exactly right around the winter solstice is very much welcome. I literally couldn’t survive winter without Christmas but I admit I’m an agnostic catholic which biases my perspective.
but the jewish festival of lights occurs around the same time every year. we also celebrate. it seems that it's more about people's unwillingness to imagine that other religions celebrate differently and don't need christmas.
I would unironically suggest the Pee Wee Christmas Special, which not only has a Hanukkah segment, but is more of a colorful campy extravaganza. Grace Jones sings, Zsa Zsa Gabor and Cher visit, Little Richard ice skates.
It is hard for the Christmas observers, almost especially ex-Christians, to face not celebrating Christmas. It is the only good family memories many of us have.
We also clearly don't reflect much on being in a subculture that can point to attempts at forcible conversion every decade since forever.
And that’s become more prevalent relatively recently. My parents were born in the 1940s & grew up in Glasgow, Christmas was more “small presents for the kids” even when they were young & the new year was the big deal, going all out for Christmas came later at least in that part of the country
Originally it was about connecting during the longest nights. Though I have also heard it helped with having children born at the right time of year in early agricultural communities too. Timing births with harvests and such. Have not read further to find out if any validity though.
I love when a complaint about annoying behavior prompts the identical annoying behavior, like, yeah, it's annoying when OTHER people do it, but I'm me!
I am half Jewish and was actually baptized as an adult and then decided I preferred being half-Jewish because … that’s who I am. All this to say I get SO annoyed with the overwhelm of Xmas and assumption that everyone celebrates, especially in places that serve the general public…
Yeah i expected at least one person to go "but you DO have to watch [insert Christmas movie]" immediately, ignoring everything you wrote, but so many?? It’s like being back on Twitter
For some reason, people are very passionate about the Muppets Christmas Carol specifically, I think any other movie would have gotten way less push-back 😅
Reminds me of when the mormons were revealed as secretly baptising every dead person ever to have lived and couldn't understand why jewish people especially might find this to be horrific.
Maybe preserving a culture against forced assimilation thru a couple millennia might give you opinions.
Sorry, you can tell me that my kids are ugly and I will ignore you, but I am going to curl defensively around the Muppets Christmas Carol. The way Michael Caine starts to cry and physically stop his younger self when young Ebenezer sends Belle away...
It’s the ONLY film with Christmas in it I actually love. Michael Caine’s performance of Scrooge, despite being surrounded by Muppets, is extraordinary.
He jumped right on it with the ghost of Christmas past, you could tell that with every fiber of his being that he did not want to be reminded of the events that he was shown and watching his stony demeanor crack with regret was just incredible.
It was smack dab in the middle of the Michael Caine random acting effort generator where you couldn't tell in advance whether he would mail it in from somewhere in a different country or sear your soul with an utterly brilliant performance. He had to have been in 90% of movies made that year.
I will say that the Rugrats Chanukah special is both entertaining and educational, as it actually explains why Chanukah is celebrated. But I didn't see it until it had been out for more than a decade and can't imagine assuming it's something everyone's would have seen.
My reaction is that the Muppets Christmas Carol came out in 1993, you have been alive for however many years, YOU HAVE HAD PLENTY OF OPPORTUNITY TO SEE IT IF YOU WANTED TO BY NOW! XD XD XD
People are acting as if you’ve never heard of such a movie…
I haven't seen those, but I like trolling dead-end streaming services for the weirdest Christmas schlock, like water-skiing Santa or "heart-warming" cartoons from the alien world of the 1930s.
oh yeah, i did love the knight before christmas, in which a knight from 13th century england gets transported to modern day ohio, learns about netflix, and falls in love
There’s a Mexican Santa Claus movie which is absolutely bizarre, as the filmmakers seemed to only know about Santa Claus from badly translated books. Among other things, it was children making the toys in Santa’s workshop which was a spaceship over the north pole.
And there’s a bizarrely racist sequence with the kids singing and dancing as they made the toys that makes the cavalcade of national stereotypes in It’s a Small World seem woke.
The obsession with muppets christmas carol seems to be UK- & US-specific (thankfully). In germany no one ever tried to make me watch it. Anyway our non religious jewish family film tradition for christmas is Hebrew Hammer. Much recommended and on topic here!
sorry, not trying to be rude! i do like christmas but sometimes it's a bit much, especially as the christian work year often doesnt let me spend major jewish holidays with my family and community
I have never gotten so little sympathy than when asking my British coworkers to please, please stop wishing us Americans merry Christmas so I can only imagine what it must be like when you’re IN THE COUNTRY.
Thanks for sharing this. As someone who grew up with Christmas and no longer celebrates (not a sob story it just never connected), even I get this. It’s inescapable in the U.S. unsure of the rest of the Western World.
I feel this too. I'm a recovered Catholic, but I wish I could de-assimilate from christmas.
Also, I feel like most of what passes for christmas tradition has little to do with christianity anyway. It's mostly stolen, watered down pagan ritual + hyper capitalism with vernacular surrealism on top
This is a big reason why I, an atheist who identifies as ethnic/cultural Jew, am against Xmas universalism. I know the commercialized version of the holiday has almost Jesus left in it but the assumed universalism of Xmas still points to Christian and white supremacy
I actually celebrate Christmas due to refugee immigrant "we need to fit in to this country" family tradition reasons and I still want certain people to shut the fuck up about it LOL
I grew up in an evangelical denomination that disallowed religious holidays, so my only association as a kid was with the Frosty and Santa stuff. Seeing the religious zeal and assumptions as I got older and more aware of the world was definitely eye opening.
Our rabbi growing up was adamant about not assimilating that way. I quasi-celebrate it now because Melissa grew up with the holiday but I'm never comfortable with Christmas. At best I have a detente with it.
In retrospect it makes sense not to assimilate it that way but my grandparents were traumatized by the Holocaust and did what they felt they had to in order to be American. I continue to celebrate it now because I have a lifetime of memories of them and my family around it.
My father married a christian and started to celebrate Christmas when I was a tween/teen. At the time I kind of enjoyed it. But in hindsight it’s deeply troubling how quickly he became christianized and expected his children to be too
I knew this but never fully realized it until I married a Jewish man, and damn, everyone non-Christian is ASSAULTED with Christianity constantly at this time.
These people are even irritating a large percentage of their fellow Christians! Some of us have worked retail and want a fucking break from the soundtrack!
“X-mas cheer”-as you know, Christians ransacking Jewish synagogues and study halls on x-mas eve is the source for the custom by many not to study Torah on x-mas eve.
This is one of the reasons Tim Minchin “White Wine in the Sun” and Paul Kelly “How to Make Gravy” mean so much to me. My family and friends are scattered all over the planet and I don’t see them as often as I’d like.
Definitely hard to feel Christmas cheer' when giving "goodwill to all men" somehow doesn't include Palestinians and my very Christian extended family have full throated support of the genocide.
That's my favorite band name of all time(!), but please make sure you understand the context here, which is basically Jewish people having Christmas stuff incessantly forced upon them, and the fact that that's really really annoying
I do understand and recognize that the OP objected to having alien cheer imposed on them, an entirely reasonable and non-Scroogian reaction. But that aspirational cheer and good will is a thing not to be apologized for. Besides, you should see what a bloody mess we make of other holidays.
“X-mas cheer”-Christians ransacking Jewish synagogues and study halls on x-mas eve is the source for the custom by many not to study Torah on x-mas eve.
We are half Jews who have a Christmas tree (my dead moms artificial tree going strong 8 years later) but I’m really upset that my kids public school has an elf on a shelf and generally is doing a flavor of Christmas hegemony that is actually not ok
people who put up these gaudy, flashing, themeless displays that take up their entire yards, who are also across the street from me, also get on my nerves
2. But on the GOOD holiday cheer side...I got to help introduce my friend's child to "Herschel and the Hanukkah Goblins" and...I think the unfamiliar feeling I experienced was a moment of true holiday joy.
Something I loved about Christmas in other nations was how utterly divorced it seemed to be from Christianity. Muslims in Senegal. Hindus in Fiji. It was about the decorations and Santa and giving gifts. Jesus? Nowhere to be found—even for Muslims. Just a quaint, exotic, and fun Western holiday.
As a practicing Christian, I have to say that Christmas can be a very depressing time of year for some Christians. The expectations of the American commercial secular celebration create so much stress. I hated Christmas until I gave up the modern version and tossed the decorations.
I'm a Christian, and I want to ban Christmas music from public spaces.
Lights are fine! Winter is dark and lights help! I don't much like the other decorations, but I don't have to care! Just PLEASE STOP SINGING AT ME ABOUT HOW JOYOUS I'M SUPPOSED TO BE.
I want to sell Christmas to the merchants. When's the last time you saw a manger scene, anyway? Sell it all, Santa (the patron saint of greed) and the Grinch and that spooky Elf on the Shelf, and Frosty - the whole thing.
In return, we get Easter back. Throw the Easter Bunny out, too.
As a kid, this was always the time when my mom's depression got super bad (very little sunlight + the anniversaries of her mother's and sister's deaths), so I was usually extra parentified to pick up the slack, and meanwhile I was also surrounded by sorrow and gloom.
I get what you mean. My family is ultra religious and I’m basically a pagan (which goes well with jul/Yule). Otoh I’ve been in xtian culture countries during December and non ones and the spirit of generosity is deeply felt. It’s nicer when ppl are markedly nice to each other!
“Every idiot who goes around with a Merry Christmas on his lips should be boiled in his own plum pudding and buried with a stake of holly in his heart”
There’s a lot to it but the gist can be gotten from one of the agents being mobbed by residents, force fed eggnog, held overnight the released in a Christmas sweater because he responded to Merry Christmas with Happy Holidays
My mom’s roommate in college is Jewish and we got to celebrate Hanukkah for one of the nights every year or so with them, the Christmas hegemony stuff always annoyed me, just enjoy the friggin holidays, don’t make it weird
I celebrate Atheist's Christmas, but I am continually stunned about how freaked out some people are hearing a jewish person explain that they do not now, nor have they ever, celebrated Christmas.
They somehow believe that it is both a Religious Celebration of Christ and a universal celebration.
I grew up evangelical and very "keep Christ in Christmas", and so I get super irritated when people freak out that I don't want anything to do with it after becoming Jewish.
"Oh, well, it's just solstice celebrations borrowed from pagans" great, go celebrate solstice then and leave me alone!
I think some people really don't understand that there's a substantial portion of evangelicals who view getting people to celebrate Christmas widely as part of a whole soft-power bring-the-masses-to-God project, and it's really frustrating!
Can confirm. I grew up the same way and I think people really underestimate the extent to which these people actually BELIEVE this and feel they have a right to force you to believe it too. They just do it with slogans not swords. For now.
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And i love that shit but come on people calm down
Pointing out that 90+% of the holiday is either marketing or borrowed from traditions that originally had nothing to do with Christ is met equally with disbelief and shock.
Praise the Lord and pass the Black Friday sales. Amen.
"oh, so what if there was a month completely revolving around and dedicated to christianity?" "that's just december" was too real
Much more about celebrating family and ways of honoring the winter solstice than religion. Good music though.
We also clearly don't reflect much on being in a subculture that can point to attempts at forcible conversion every decade since forever.
but only in the northern hemisphere
Maybe preserving a culture against forced assimilation thru a couple millennia might give you opinions.
But you don't have to watch the thing...
Caine treated the Muppets like they were just like him, fellow actors.
Curry treated the Muppets like he was just like them, another slightly unhinged puppet.
Perfection!
People are acting as if you’ve never heard of such a movie…
That’s all.
Also, I feel like most of what passes for christmas tradition has little to do with christianity anyway. It's mostly stolen, watered down pagan ritual + hyper capitalism with vernacular surrealism on top
**almost NO Jesus left
2. But on the GOOD holiday cheer side...I got to help introduce my friend's child to "Herschel and the Hanukkah Goblins" and...I think the unfamiliar feeling I experienced was a moment of true holiday joy.
Lights are fine! Winter is dark and lights help! I don't much like the other decorations, but I don't have to care! Just PLEASE STOP SINGING AT ME ABOUT HOW JOYOUS I'M SUPPOSED TO BE.
In return, we get Easter back. Throw the Easter Bunny out, too.
It's not great! 🙃
https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-784
They somehow believe that it is both a Religious Celebration of Christ and a universal celebration.
"Oh, well, it's just solstice celebrations borrowed from pagans" great, go celebrate solstice then and leave me alone!