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Annual I Hate The Holidays Thread

It’s for the people who can enjoy it, I personally am about to spend my 9th straight Christmas alone and eating takeout. I’ll just get baked way earlier than normal and spend the day watching music documentaries. I like seeing the kids all hyper about the thing and people are that slightly less shittier to each other for 48 hours or whatever but It means fuck all to me either way. If my life is dictated to me at any point by what the “world” is up to, I’ll just pack it in, the fuckers would have me on strings by that point. Let the fucks do what they want. I’ll just watch it all pass by and limit my exposure.
 
arnold layne said:
I use the forum as an emotional outlet. I put on a brave face and grind it out. My apologies. Maybe I should use a notebook instead. lol.
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We all like to vent on here. I relate to what you are saying. As you get older it starts to hit home that some of the loved ones you spend your holidays with probably won’t be around for much longer and I would rather look back after their gone on these times and be happy that I faked it for them instead of being a miserable cunt. And you have kids. I imagine it must be cool to see their faces when they unwrap some toy that they really wanted.
 
I love the holidays. Mrs Borski drives across the country to her mom’s and Salsh spends his time with the pooches and copious amounts of booze, salami and cheese. What could be better?
 
I just heard Christmas music playing at the grocery store. Makes me feel bad for the poor employees who have to listen to that all day. That is like a form of torture. That said, what is everyone’s favourite Christmas album? Alvin and The Chipmunks is tough to beat.
 
The thing I hate most about the holidays is what it does to my wife. She's super stressed for six weeks and miserable which makes the holidays nothing but misery for me.
 
I love Christmas. Good vibes, good music (also some awful music too, especially the modern secular corporate plastic Christmas music you hear at the mall), happy children, spending time with family, and celebrating the birth of the Lord. The traditions, the lights, the nostalgia, the coziness of it all. Its good times.

MAGATRON said:
I just heard Christmas music playing at the grocery store. Makes me feel bad for the poor employees who have to listen to that all day. That is like a form of torture. That said, what is everyone’s favourite Christmas album? Alvin and The Chipmunks is tough to beat.
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Im not sure what my all time favorite is but without thinking about it too hard these ones came to mind first

Christmas Eve and Other Stories by Trans-Siberian Orchestra. The first and best album of their Christmas trilogy. They also put on a great live show. This album covers so many genres yet it all gels seamlessly.

A Charlie Brown Christmas by the Vince Guaraldi Trio. Im not even 100% sure I've ever watched the Charlie Brown Christmas special. If I did I dont remember it. And yet this music still makes me nostalgic.

An Oscar Peterson Christmas by Oscar Peterson. Another jazz record. Perfect for late snowy night's.

The Four Seasons' Christmas Album by Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. I really like the Little Drummer Boy from this album. My grandpa loved Frankie Valli. It always reminds me of him.

Христос се роди (Christ is Born) by Divna Ljubojević and Melodi. Eastern Orthodox Christian hymns in a very unique and ethereal style by a Serbian female singer with a hauntingly gorgeous voice. It's not the kind of Christmas music (either secular or religious) that we are familiar with in the West but its very good nonetheless. The vocals (there are no instruments) are in the Orthodox liturgical languages of Greek and Church Slavonic as well as some Serbian.

Any Christmas compilations of Louis Armstrong, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Ella Fitzgerald. There's a ton more that aren't coming to mind atm.
 
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1763803787468.webp

every year, i cant wait to put his up

its the highlight of christmas for me

i've known this stall all my life

i didnt even have good christmasses as a kid, the family was always fighting. i dreaded the festivities. yet, this stall was always there. a peacefull family, symbolizing all that was missing in my own life

today, it also symbolyses the birth of christ for me.

I can look at this stall for hours, listening to music. it physically emits energy rays of love and support
 
Borki said:
nd celebrating the birth of the Lord.
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Not trying to be snarky, here, legitimately asking. From everything I've seen, Jesus was actually born sometime in the summer through maybe October. Christians took the the solstice festival Saturnalia and made that their winter celebration about the birth of Christ. How do you feel about that? Does it bother you that it was a Pagan holiday first or do you just say that it's about celebrating the birth, no matter if the time is accurate?
 
Does anybody know if there is a Trump version of Little Drummer Boy where they’ve changed that pa-rump-a-rump-rump part to ta-rump-a-Trump-Trump?
 
AxlisOld said:
Not trying to be snarky, here, legitimately asking. From everything I've seen, Jesus was actually born sometime in the summer through maybe October. Christians took the the solstice festival Saturnalia and made that their winter celebration about the birth of Christ. How do you feel about that? Does it bother you that it was a Pagan holiday first or do you just say that it's about celebrating the birth, no matter if the time is accurate?
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celebrating the birth of christ, for me, isn't like some kind of birthday party, the same way as say your uncle celebrates

dates are futile anyway, when it comes to god

christ "the son" existed before he was born in the flesh anyway. He (the son) was there when the heavens were created. The son is party of the trinity, the other two being the father and the holy spirit

jesus "received" the holy spirit in the form of a dove, at the moment he was baptised

all these elements are part of the big mystery. us people can't really understand this.

what is celebrated is not really a date, a time, but an event. the birth of the savior, in the form of the flesh, that was destined to receive the holy spirit.

that pagan and celtic elements were incorporated in christianity does not really bother me. it's merely packaging. it's the message that it's all about.
 
AxlisOld said:
Not trying to be snarky, here, legitimately asking. From everything I've seen, Jesus was actually born sometime in the summer through maybe October. Christians took the the solstice festival Saturnalia and made that their winter celebration about the birth of Christ. How do you feel about that? Does it bother you that it was a Pagan holiday first or do you just say that it's about celebrating the birth, no matter if the time is accurate?
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The connection between Saturnalia and Christmas has been largely overstated online. There are more differences than similarities. They weren't even on the same date. Saturnalia was on December 17th and later expanded to run 7 days until the 23rd. The 25th was chosen for Christmas because of theological reasons and calculations that had nothing to do with Saturnalia. There was a Jewish/Christian belief at the time that prophets were conceived on the same calender day they died. We have the writings of people like Hippolytus of Rome to show how they made their calculations. They believed that Jesus died on March 25th during Passover and then added 9 months due to that being the normal gestation period. This is how we arrived at December 25th. But it is true that some of the traditions from Saturnalia were carried over to Christmas. And no, it doesnt bother me.

Its also true that Christmas almost certainly does not fall on the actual date of Christ's birth. But that doesn't bother me either. Christmas is part of our liturgical calender. It doesn't need to be totally accurate to Christ's birthday. It serves a symbolic and liturgical function.

There are other things about Christmas celebrations that are innacurate too and they also don't bother me. Like the "3 Kings" in nativity scenes and Christmas songs. The Magi weren't actually kings and almost certainly weren't there on the day Jesus was born. Probably didnt show up until months later. Also the Bible doesn't specify that there were 3 of them. No number is given. But hey, who cares.

It makes sense that as the Gentile Christians started to outnumber the Jewish Christians they took some of their pagan customs and traditions with them and repurposed them. Nothing wrong with that. There are some (low church) Christians today who refuse to celebrate Christmas and other Christian holidays like Halloween and Easter because they are "pagan". Seventh Day Adventists refuse to celebrate holidays alltogether. But if we were really supposed to avoid anything remotely tied to paganism, we would basically be unable to function in the world. The early Church would have had to live in the wilderness and never interacted with society. For a long time almost all of human civilization was pagan except for the Jews and some Gentiles here and there (and even the Jews were pretty fucking pagan for a huge portion of their history. The Old Testament can basically be summed up as the story of the Jews repeatedly falling into pagan idolatry, repenting, and then repeating the cycle again and again). Paganism undoubtedly had an influence on Christianity (and not just when it comes to Christmas but other things too, including theology) and thats not neccessarily a bad thing.

I think Paul's comments on whether or not a Christian can eat food sacraficed to idols in 1 Corinthians 8 and Romans 14 are relevant here. Several years prior the Council of Jerusalem met and wrote to Gentile Christians to clarify some confusion and controversies regarding whether or not they needed to observe Jewish customs (like circumcision, Jewish holidays, eating Kosher, etc). The letter basically said - no. Most of that stuff was not neccessary. But they were given some instructions about a few things to avoid, including food sacraficed to idols. Later on Paul clarified in his letters that it was actually ok for Christians to eat food sacraficed to idols so long as it didnt become a stumbling block for them or their fellow Christians. As long as their conscience wasnt treating the food as a means of worshipping false gods, or giving other Christians the impression they were worshipping false gods, or causing other Christians distress - it was fine. If that was the case for food directly intended to worship pagan gods, then certainly some traditions being repurposed for Christmas isnt a problem. Just because something is pagan doesn't neccessarily mean its inherently bad or spooky. Scripture says to avoid superstition. And winter festivals and gift giving predate both Christmas and Saturnalia anyways. Also important to keep in mind we aren't even using the same Julian calender they were using back then. Western Christianity (and most of humanity) uses the Gregorian calander. But in Eastern Christianity they still largely use the Julian calender for liturgical purposes which is why they celebrate Christmas on January 7th (which is December 25th on the Julian calender). Some Armenian Christians celebrate it on other dates in January that I dont recall off the top of my head. There are at least 4 Christmas dates per year that I know of (none of which align with Saturnalia).

I just realized. Im pretty sure we had this same exact conversation last year lol.
 
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