For those that can’t stand this time of the year, my misery seeks company. What does it for you?
For me: aside from the usual family stuff:
I worked front-end in a post office back when that meant a line-up before I opened the doors to the end of the day when I had to inform the line-up that was still out the door that, yes, I was going to close on time. (Some didn’t take that well. For me it was just another Tuesday…)
It meant a lot of work with little thanks and I had to listen to the same shitty Xmas playlist over and over all day.
Edit/PS: The quick downvote sells it. Perfection. chefs kiss
I really don’t like getting presents in company. I’m an Autist and don’t react as people would expect, so masking sets in which is very stressful.
so masking sets in which is very stressful.
Pretending to be happy sucks. (…the energy right out of me.)
Mimicking looking happy and grateful.
“Say cheese!”
“Why?”
“Because it makes you look like you’re smiling.”
“Oh…”
Yeah that’s where the misunderstanding starts. Meta style!
Not every Autist is identical (or rather everyone is wildly different) . I mostly have no issues understanding things like that and I can be a master of sarcasm. However this makes it all the worse when it hits and flies over my head with random other stuff: but that was so obvious. Sigh.
Are there any holidays or celebratory rituals you do like?
Well it also has its advantages. People are on vacation and in general it’s less busy so that’s an advantage.
Anything where I can just be. There’s no fixed time for that.
I hope you get some being time for yourself then!
Thanks!
You’re not alone in hating Christmas, though for me it’s different: it’s the stress of having to celebrate, be happy, and get people presents. I don’t want to be forced to or pretend to be happy, I have nothing to celebrate, and if I want to give someone a present I don’t need to wait for Christmas (and if I don’t want to give a present, I shouldn’t be required to).
Basically, Christmas is just another way to make people spent a lot of money with the pretense of it being “the happiest time of the year” (for someone else).
I had the right not to be happy, don’t mandate that I should be happy during Christmas.
I had the right not to be happy
I rather like that.
I decided long ago that Christmas and birthdays just wasn’t for me. Easy enough when I live alone.
I don’t decorate, don’t eat anything out of the ordinary, don’t dress up. It’s just a normal day, that passes without much ado. Hate is too strong a word, I just ignore it.
This pretty much sums it up for me, I don’t specifically hate Christmas but I don’t celebrate it.
I do loathe winter as a whole though. Weather is shit, the lack of day light hours, and just general miserable nature of this time of year can fuck off.
I’m kinda done with it taking up a third of the year. You start seeing Christmas decorations and shit hit store shelves before Halloween.
It’s shameless corporate horse shit disguised as shameless religious horse shit.
the same shitty Xmas playlist over and over all day.
This pretty much sums it up. Music is a big part of my life, and to hear it be so… corporate and someone-has-a-case-of-the-mondays vibed makes me sick.
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Forcing each other to give gift we can’t afford to people that doesn’t need them and probably will end up in a landfill in 2 years time. PD: It would be really interesting to research Christmas impact on the environment.
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Forcing each other to be appear to be happy when a lot of incredibly shitty shit is happening around the world. I’d rather call it Double blindfold holiday!
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Telling a mandatory lie to kids, that is effectively their forced introduction to a society that values and encourages deception and the disconnection from reality.
Fuck Christmas!!!
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I just hate the consumerism of it all. Gift giving shouldn’t be or feel to be obligatory, it should just be something extra and unexpected.
If there was no religious connotations and the gift giving shit was done away with I wouldn’t mind.
I do like how entire communities get together and do the same things like light up the streets with Christmas lights and all follow a nice theme.
But I prefer Halloween due to the lack of religion and the only expectations are to give out candy to children.
I haven’t considered Christmas to be religious in 30 years or so. To me, it’s just a time to take off work and exchange presents. Since my parents died, I don’t even have to go visit anyone. My son and I take little trip in lieu of a Christmas dinner. He likes Christmas traditions (secular) but he gets that through his other grandparents.
The constant bombastic music is absolutely terrible. Jingle jingle jingle jazzy jazzy BELLS BELLS BELLS BELLS DING DANG DONG And remember, if you complain, it means you don’t want any presents this year!!
Also it’s MERRY CHRISTMAS not HAPPY HOLIDAYS even though there’s advent, christmastide, St John’s Day, St. Nicholas Day, all those funny South American holidays, all Christian holidays celebrated at this time that are not Christmas. But JESUS is the reason for the season.
My wife has been listening to stomp n holler Christmas songs since fucking November it’s getting really old.
I can’t be happy anymore and nothing contrasts being happy as a kid with how hollow you are now like the holidays. It also highlights how much of a nonfunctional piece of shit I am because I’m terrible at getting people presents just like I’m terrible at doing anything, so in addition to hating myself for that I also get to feel anxious about it the whole time and then hate myself when people get me things and I haven’t gotten them things. I’m also really hate christianity so all the religious songs drive me insane. All in all it’s completely fucking miserable and I do my best not to show any of it to anyone because I don’t want to ruin the holidays for them.
My mom was the one who loved Christmas. She loved decorating and shopping and the music. She died in 2010 and it has never been the same. It might have been okay if we still had small children in our family but all her grandkids were grown up by the time she died. We didn’t even have any kind of celebration the first few years after. So, Christmas died with her.
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Deep down I’m still an edgy militant atheist, and really want nothing to do with religious celebrations.
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The only things I really want are things I’m not realistically going to be gifted. No one’s going to buy and install a new heater/windows/deck for me for Christmas, or pay down my credit card, etc. I have too much junk already, I have all the clothes I need, I don’t really need more snacks in the house, and I’m pretty much set up with everything I need/want for my hobbies. I don’t need gifts. Inevitably I’m going to get a bunch of junk I don’t need or want, and I’m gonna take it straight home and throw it out or donate it or otherwise I’m going to spend the next eternity shuffling around my house because I don’t have anywhere to put it.
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I’m probably a bit autistic or maybe just a bit dead inside, so even on the rare occasion I get a gift I’m really excited about I don’t really have much of a reaction to it, which I feel is disappointing to the people giving it to me.
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I really hate decorating and then having to take it all down a month or so later, having to haul all this crap down from the attic and then back up again is a real drag. It’s part of the reason I get a real tree, it’s easier to just strap it back onto my roof and haul it to my friend’s house to burn in their fire pit (which is very cathartic) than to try to wrestle it back up the ladder. My wife likes it, so I suffer through it, I just wish she’d do more of the work.
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I don’t want to spend money. I have things I want to save for and dropping a couple hundred bucks on presents isn’t helping that. I don’t mind getting people gifts if it’s something I think they really need or wound like, but thats usually not why I’m buying them stuff for Christmas, I’m getting them stuff because I feel obligated to get them something.
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Family gatherings suck. As far as families go mine isn’t too bad, I’d even say I kind of like most of them, but getting all of them in the room together and having to spend most of the day with them is too much. There’s too many people, it’s too loud, and while they’re generally all good people, I don’t really have enough in common with most of them to make it worth the aggravation, they’re best enjoyed in small doses. My wife’s family is smaller and quieter, which would be great, except they want the gathering to go on all day, my wife is bringing stuff over to make breakfast and it sounds like they plan to keep things going until at least dinner, so thats probably gonna be a 12+ hour ordeal when you figure in the time it takes to go over the river and through the woods to grandmothers house. Also, most of our family just aren’t great cooks, and even if they were there are some picky eaters in the family, so family meals are pretty lackluster. I think my wife’s family’s dinner plans are a stouffers lasagna. Luckily I have to work this year so I have a good excuse not to go.
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Christmas music can be good, but not the stuff that’s been piped into every single fucking store I’ve had to go to for the last month, and I’m sick of it.
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This is mostly just a me-problem, but I have way too much shit going on this time of year. My anniversary is in November, then thanksgiving which we usually do with my father in law who’s about an hour away, my wife’s birthday, my mom’s birthday, christmas even which is usually with my family, usually about 45 minutes away depending on who’s hosting, Christmas day is usually with my mother in law about an hour away, and then after that I usually host a new years eve party and between work and holiday obligations it’s kind of crazy trying to get my house ready for that.
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I work in 911 dispatch, we always get some really crazy/sad calls around this time of year. I deal with it just fine personally, but it doesn’t exactly put me in a holly jolly mood.
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I don’t know, I made it this far and just kind of wanted to leave it on a nice round number I guess… Maybe I find tinsel distracting?
I work in 911 dispatch, we always get some really crazy/sad calls around this time of year. I deal with it just fine personally, but it doesn’t exactly put me in a holly jolly mood.
Fishbowl guy needs some love too, no? (sorry, from a previous post but lol, that stuck.)
Deep down I’m still an edgy militant atheist, and really want nothing to do with religious celebrations.
The older I get the more atheist I become rather than agnostic, and the more militant towards that I become despite trying not to be. But everything just screams it to me the more and more I understand the world on a fundamental level and experience life. Been a couple things in the past few years that have really clicked for me that didn’t before. And where I am right now (staying in a hostel) where I meet people who won’t turn on BlueTooth because it “messes with their brain” have…
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Yeah. Them five whole G’s on a cellphone are going to break you, but you go ahead and have a loud conversation in a public space on your speaker-phone…
1 - Is it even religious anymore? My extended family aren’t even christian or like take religions seriously in anyway afaik (context: Chinese Americans, but I have like some uncles from HK), they still “celebrate” christmas as a sort of “oh its another year and the calandar is says its a holiday so I guess we should um… do something?” type of thing, like an excuse to get together or something.
2&3 - When I was a kid, I’d want stuff but rarely get stuff lol. My cousins all have like Wiis and DS and all the fun stuff… so spending time with them just reminded me of how much stricter my parents are with “no video games because it’s unproductive and waste of time” and also reminded me that we are lower on the wealth-social status than them and we’re poorer. Honestly I don’t even have any of these “gifts” that are memorable, that how much my brain didn’t care to remember.
4 - Lol you could just skip that part. Who cares, have some random lighting and call it a day lol. I never even had a chrismas tree.
6 - Yea, I had cousins that are assholes since they feel so privilaged about their birthright citizenship. They be playing with their Nintendo DS or something and I had nothing… so I was always an outcast… I get it… I remember I always wanted to go home when in a relative’s house. I have like memories just watching cousins play games while I felt sad and bored and my sould kinda died inside lol. Like loneliness in a big crowd. The only one I could relate to was my older brother… my abusive older brother who I had fights with a lot…
7 - Holiday music makes me cringe, and I feel anxious af… idk why
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Because it promotes Christianity
We have a (presumably) non Christian here saying because it promotes Christianity and elsewhere we have a (presumably) Christian saying because it promotes paganism.
Unironically though, I think it’s cool that we have a diversity of opinions here!
Christians of that sort are incapable of fun
I’d be fine with if that’s all it was, I can respect people who maintain tradition for whatever reason. It wouldn’t be important to me, but I get logically how tradition maintains community bonds. That’s fine, we have a lot of ethnic and religious traditions that various groups follow and they don’t impose it on anyone.
But Christmas most definitely does not promote Christianity, it promotes some kind of heinous, bastardized version of modern Christianity that’s completely about meaningless product consumption, decoration and ritual without meaning.
Will growing up learning to string electric lights on a slowly-dying pine tree turn a kid Christian? Most likely not… but he is sure going to learn that when he gets his own apartment (as required in modern capitalist single-family living) he will spend that money on his own dying pine tree and string of electric lights.
Driving… I hate driving. Because I live somewhat far from where the family gathers I get volunteered to be the family taxi and go all over long island picking up people. Turns an hour+ drive into 3 and then back doing it all over. Bleh.
