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Christmas, Hannukah, and other Yuletide Holidays

NatGeo

NatGeo

is a Contributor Alumnus
Alright, so it is about a week until the big day most of us are waiting for: Christmas. Some of us are in it for Black Ops, some for seeing their family, others for reasons unknown or not thought of yet by me. However, most of us will be in for a very eventful and very enjoyable season ahead (or might I say, is coming to a slow close, since once Christmas is done, that's that). I personally am looking very forward to it.

However, I kinda think that other holidays this time of year are almost shunned in a way. Christmas gets all the attention this time around: how many menorahs do you see at the holiday shop? Though the Jewish have already finished Hannukah, some celebrate Christmas.

Lastly, what about other Yuletide holidays that are little known? Like Kwanzaa, or the Winter Solstice? If anyone here has information on that, fell free to chime in?

What are your thoughts on Christmas?

What do you think it stands for?

Are there any other holidays you or anyone you know celebrate along with or in lieu of Christmas?

Answer below!
 
Kwanzaa deserves more credit. I don't even celebrate it, but it's the Kevin Bacon of holidays (as opposed to acting).


edit: The Winter Solstice isn't a holiday. It's a celestial event, and is only relevant to astronomers and people who carry calenders.
 
I personally see Christmas as generally disconnected from any religious connotations. It's not about Christ or any Holy Men, but just a day like Thanksgiving (Again, in which we don't really care about the history of the day) where you spend time with the family and buy each other gifts.
 
Gabe: According to the bible jesus was born in the spring sometime. Meanwhile, the proximity to the solstice is pretty strong evidence that Constantine, upon his conversion to christianity (whereby he declared it NOT a cult) chose this date as a figurehead holiday in order to placate various pagan sects so they could still celebrate that time of year to make their transition easier, since he was converting the entirety of the roman empire at the time to what would today be similar to America converting fully to Scientology (pay attention slim man and look at stone henge and the many other henges around the world, even the old one in south america). I think a bit of date-drift occurred, hence the 4 or so day difference. You are wise to disconnect it from religious connotations.

I have to say, I haven't been excited for christmas at all for the last 5 years. There is ONE thing I am excited about which is a bad movie exchange with my brother. It all started when I got him Big Trouble in Little China for christmas, so he replied the next with The Road Warrior. I replied in kind the next year with a Conan the Barbarian 2 pack and he was gay and got me Beerfest last year. So now I've decided to bury him with a Cobra and Over the Top 2 pack. The criteria has become rather rigid: one-liners are amazing, it must be watchable yet horrendously bad at the same time. I think Cobra has him absolutely destroyed this year. I did 20 hours+ research to find a movie like that. Beyond that, I hate christmas. I AM THE GRINCH, quite literally, I hate decorating a tree, I hate the music, I hate forced time with my family, I hate that I don't look forward to dinosaur toys (MODELS) anymore, I hate getting screamed at for not being jolly or pleasant and I hate the connotation. I do like the free shit though, call me materialistic but I am a noted opportunist and realist. I especially hate those that complain about christmas. Here is an idea: make your holidays more accessible by lobbying TV stations to play interesting material or fun movies about them, then I will go "Ohhhh so THAT is what Kwanza is!"

I actually demanded a festivus pole at my work just to be a jerk.

I was told to fuck off.
 
Christmas is the most epic holiday ever. I love Christmas. Lots of good food, good songs at the Midnight Mass (which our church moves up to 11pm), the entire month of December we have people out and about collecting money and goods for charities. People have their lights strung up outside their houses and all the town squares are decorated, even if some of them buy into the pc Happy Holidays bullshit. (Season's Greetings? In North America and Europe the season is damned winter! Who welcomes that?) I don't know when it got to the point people were such loathsome oversensitive whiners they'd be offended by wishing them a freaking Merry Christmas. Who gives a damn if it's on the wrong historical day, people don't work on the monday after a federal holiday that occurs on the weekend out of principle, do they? Big freakin' deal.

I wish you all a very merry Christmas and hope the hearts of all you grinches and grinchettes grow 3 sizes this year!

HAPPY FESTIVUS MORM! btw. have you considered Battlefield Earth for your terrible movie gift swap? Spaceballs was a pretty good riff on Star Wars so it might not qualify, but it depends on your brother's sense of humor. Oh, and I never saw The Chipmunks movies but they're a rehash of a rehashed rehash so I doubt they'll be worthwhile.
 
i like everything about christmas except the expectation of presents!!! id rather everyone just bought themselves something nice and spent time with each other than waste money on shit gifts that get returned!
 
I love Christmas! Best time of the year!

This last week, the first snow of the year came out, and me and my elementary schoolers had a jolly old time throwing snow and making yuki-daruma (snow man). Yeah, Hihi Daruma shoulda gotten an ice-type snow-man form instead :( Anyway I got all the playing in the snow that my own childhood was completely void of. Not that I'm complaining :D

But yeah, in just 3 days, Imma leave the cold of Northern Japan, to head back home to spend Christmas with my family and friends back in Hawaii.

I'm looking to another wonderful Christmas, with clear sunny skies, warm beach weather, and wonderful Christmas parties. With the usual spread.

All my favorite Christmas-time foods like Turkey, Prime-rib, Mashed potatoes, eggnog, apple pie, fried gyouza, chow fun, sashimi, spam-furikake-rice, tako poki and soumen salad. Mmm-mmm!

Grandma's soumen salad (soumen is a type of white Japanese noodle . . .)! Yay for Hawaii culture, even my Japanese students were weirded out by this one when I told them about it.

More than anything, Christmas just a wonderful time of family, togetherness . . . and food!




. . . oh, and lots of hilarious Christmas-parody specials, including abridged series specials: Dragon Ball Z Abridged: "Christmas Tree of Might"
 
monkfish said:
waste money on shit gifts
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Here's the thing: If you know somebody well enough, you should know what they like and dislike, you shouldn't be GETTING them "shit gifts". If you can't think what to buy someone, maybe that means you aren't truly close to them?
 
monkfish said:
i like everything about christmas except the expectation of presents!!! id rather everyone just bought themselves something nice and spent time with each other than waste money on shit gifts that get returned!
Click to expand...

I just give people money. If they return that I won't complain. :adam::ad am:

Anyway, I love Christmas, I just hate the "stress" of the holidays. The so-called "culture war", the having to make your house perfect, which luckily my parents decided to forgo this year, the shopping for presents. I like the being with family and having lots of food, usually good food at that! I love the lasagna my dad makes each year (mmmm).

I'm not really sure about Hannukah but my two Jewish friends say its fucking awful compared to Christmas so I take their word for it. I used to think it was 7 Christmases but apparently its like 7 Christmases, if those 7 Christmases were all the shittiest Christmases ever. I'm not going to judge.

I'm pretty sure Kwanzaa isn't even a real holiday either, I remember some black woman talking about it on the History channel and basically she said all she knows about Kwanzaa is that when she was in middle school these Black Panther people came to her school and told her they had to celebrate Kwanzaa otherwise they weren't black.

tl;dr: I really like the holiday's I just hate the bullshit associated with them.
 
Random story time.

So, last year one of my (female) friends thought it would be funny to give a couple people including me small bags filled with coal. I got 3 lumps of the stuff.

I have three siblings.

lulz ensued
 
I like Christmas for the time off school and for the presents. Family time sucks.
Last year my mom and step dad got in a huge fight on Christmas Eve. It kind of ruined Christmas permanently for me.
This year I'm happily spending less than 1 day of my break at home.

However I do really like shopping for presents for my close friends.
edit: And cookies. Those are good too.

And I agree with Gabe:
I personally see Christmas as generally disconnected from any religious connotations. It's not about Christ or any Holy Men, but just a day like Thanksgiving (Again, in which we don't really care about the history of the day) where you spend time with the family and buy each other gifts.
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Christmas is a terrible holiday, like most. Since it took on a form that has fucking prescriptionists saying "merry christmas" by early December (I think it was around December 8th-9th), the holiday annoys me so much that I hate it more than any holiday, even Christopher Columbus day (a day which celebrates a tyrant, at this point not as bad as celebrating commercialism and an unproven god).

I also never knew that the lights could be so bothersome, but they really fuck with me at nighttime when I am looking for cars/people, since an oncoming light in my parking lot causes me to rapidfire brake.
 
i just hate the asshole who have politically correct up their ass so far they have to say "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas". The holiday is Christmas, not holidays. If you don't celebrate Christmas (say, Kwanza) then say Happy/Merry Kwanza, not this Happy Holidays crap.
 
I have never celebrated Christmas for religious reasons. I've always looked at it with a "reap the rewards" type of outlook, though. As a kid, I would just look forward to break, Christmas parties (or holiday parties to keep it secular) at school, Christmas specials of TV shows, playing new games at friends houses.

Things like that still pretty much apply. Sales on games and electronics are extremely useful, and winter break is a Godsend.

If there's one thing I do hate about this time of year, it's people that are overly politically correct, or overly Christian. People who will tell me that I'm being offensive when I say something along the lines of "Christmas sales" is being over the top. Then the people who are offended if you don't refer to the general time period of October to December as Christmas season. I'd much rather be overly politically correct than deal with the second group of people...

Hell, they deserve their own Cong thread.

Edit: Do I look like an ass now? I posted mine without seeing the post prior, btw.
 
Deck Knight said:
HAPPY FESTIVUS MORM! btw. have you considered Battlefield Earth for your terrible movie gift swap? Spaceballs was a pretty good riff on Star Wars so it might not qualify, but it depends on your brother's sense of humor. Oh, and I never saw The Chipmunks movies but they're a rehash of a rehashed rehash so I doubt they'll be worthwhile.
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It has to be filled with one liners pretty much and it has to be watchable
so the chipmunks is right the fuck out.
 
In our family, we celebrate Christmas for the religious aspect only. Never for the "commercialized" aspect. That means we don't have a tree in our house, we don't have any decorations and the only carols we listen to are from the Christian radio station my parents blast downstairs. Furthermore, lol@giving presents in our house, and Christmas is a day where I usually spend my day upstairs on the computer having a all-day gaming fest with my friends over the net, or just fucking around outside with friends. Think this year, I'll just ask my dad for 300 bucks to buy a PS3; chances of me getting it though, are pretty slim.

In terms of the religious aspect, FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF. My parents routinely force my cousin and I to perform some hack drama for the entire church (usually we're crippled due to the lack of time my dad gives, lack of props, and pretty much, lack of any acting ability or creativity by my cousin and me.) Reminds me, we have to practice today, and the thing is tomorrow! We have a Christmas church dinner my parents prepare. (which is tomorrow!) And my dad always gives a message that goes off some random tangent which I always think in my head logical fallacies in his message, general grammatical mistakes, or way to improve the presentation of the message much better.

I wish all of you a much greater Christmas than I will be having.
 
I remember a time when people said both Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays and that was fine. You can get mad at Christians for being trivial with their insistence that 'Happy Holidays' is offensive or something, but remember that they didn't start this shit. It was the politically correct, the kings of triviality, that decided there needed to be a distinction in the first place.

Other than that, Christmas is alot like Valentines day in that misanthropes without dates have to let everyone else know how much it sucks. Not that I've ever had a girlfriend ON Valentine's Day (timing, but I once got one two days AFTER the day), but its pretty pathetic.
 
I don't think Christmas really is a religious holiday in general anymore, it's more just a goodwill celebration of family and food and whatnot.


Despite my atheism, though, I've always loved Christmas carols. My particular favourites are O Holy Night, Carol of the Bells, Once In Royal David's City and Good King Wenceslas. Oh, and Hark the Herald Angels Sing.
 
Battlefield Earth is at least watchable. But for good bad movies I really suggest a badly dubbed Chinese martial arts flick. Dragon Lee vs The Five Brothers is one of my favorites in that area, and it's streamable on Netflix!
 
Texas Cloverleaf said:
i just hate the asshole who have politically correct up their ass so far they have to say "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas". The holiday is Christmas, not holidays. If you don't celebrate Christmas (say, Kwanza) then say Happy/Merry Kwanza, not this Happy Holidays crap.
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I just say "Merry Christmachanukwanzukah".
 
Surgo said:
Battlefield Earth is at least watchable. But for good bad movies I really suggest a badly dubbed Chinese martial arts flick. Dragon Lee vs The Five Brothers is one of my favorites in that area, and it's streamable on Netflix!
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The One-Armed Snake Boxer vs. The Master of the Flying Guillotine.
 
I love Christmas. It's the only time of the year when my entire family is actually together. And I'm really excited this year, because I just got my little brother the perfect present, and I can't wait to see the look on his face!!! ^_^

Granted, my brother and I are both atheists in a Christian family, so the two of us also celebrate Festivus. We set up our Festivus pole, just like my darling Kitty Cat. Since we are too lazy to even go out and get a pole in concrete and we think that doing so would violate the message of non-commercialism that Festivus is supposed to send, we just put a very tall mop into a box so that only the pole sticks out. It looks authentic enough.
 
NeilKosugi said:
I just say "Merry Christmachanukwanzukah".
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Hahaha. Really though, I have no problem if somebody is using the term if they're among a group of people who celebrate different holidays, it's just the politically correct people who say it for no reason other than to not show favouritism that bug me.
 
I don't celebrate Christmas, and I would prefer that, in public places, the more secular term "Happy Holidays" be used. Honestly, I don't care about putting up Christmas Trees in the town square, since the Tree is a secular symbol (aka: it has nothing to do with Jesus, who probably never saw an evergreen tree in his life).
 
Lanturn314 said:
Granted, my brother and I are both atheists in a Christian family, so the two of us also celebrate Festivus. We set up our Festivus pole, just like my darling Kitty Cat. Since we are too lazy to even go out and get a pole in concrete and we think that doing so would violate the message of non-commercialism that Festivus is supposed to send, we just put a very tall mop into a box so that only the pole sticks out. It looks authentic enough.
Click to expand...

This sounds hilarious. It reminds me of a joke I once heard some Jewish comedian tell:

Hanakkah sucks!! We celebratate Hanakkah with crappy tops, but Christians celebrate with . . . electricity!

All those flashing lights, screaming (to the tune of jinglebells) "We're having fun, we're having fun, we're having fun and you're not!"
 
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