Sure, the first year (or two) of COVID were wretched, but most of those barriers have since cleared — yet I’m still struggling. I’ve noticed the same with a number of people within my family and neighbourhood.
How are others feeling? Are you struggling, yet succeeding? If so, how are you breaking through?
My impression is just that nobody has the money for it anymore.
really? For me it’s more of a not having time. Doesn’t cost much to go caroling, watch Charlie Brown, cut paper snowflakes, make handmade gifts, etc
Money is time. When you spend all of your time and energy focusing on working, eating, and sleeping because you’re too broke to do anything else, it doesn’t leave you with much time or energy to care about christmas.
Yeah, if you’re working it all just becomes decorations along your commute, interrupted by a few busy family days followed by more work.
Money is the issue with all holidays in recent times. Take the fuckin’ money out of it, it should never have been involved in the first place.
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There are ideas and arguments that can counter consumerism.
For instance - putting away same old decorations and reusing them should lower consumerism somewhat.
For instance - putting away same old decorations and reusing them should lower consumerism somewhat.
Wait, do people NOT do this? I use the same shit every year unless it’s broken and I can’t fix it. Usually my cats are in some way to blame for that.
Dunno how many do/don’t do it 😁
I just wanted to point out a rather obvious idea 😂
Earth would also thank you!My cousins have upped this game. They have toddlers. Starting in Feb, they begin stealing back the least popular toys and hiding them in the attic. Then they regift them back to the kids next Christmas. They only buy a couple new items every year.
It reduces clutter in the house and will probably work until around 6, when they plan to shift from regifting to donating.
Or you could be like my mom, who has to buy a new fake tree like every year.
They actually have these things now called real trees that are perfect for discarding every year after you are done with them.
I even paid extra for a biodegradable one!
They leave needles everywhere. Imo, better to just use the same fake tree for decades.
They have actually found way of making some of them so that they ether don’t leave needles around or if they do that needles are soft. Super nice, it has been our tree type of choice for a few years now.
I assume most do. No I am not going to spend hours trying to remember some cheap plastic thing I bought a decade ago from the dollar store but if it’s fine sure I put it away for next year
Xmas 2020 with all the “shortages”, at the Target and WalMarts near me the holiday aisles was very scant, and practically completely picked over by the week before. I had genuinely hoped that could have been an eye opener for America.
Spoiler alert: it didn’t
I reuse the same decorations over and over again and don’t really think I am doing anything special.
yup! It can be hard to sustain holiday cheer for 5+ weeks
You’re right that it’s about consumerism for many people, but it doesn’t have to be.
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There is a TV special from 1965 that describes your plight:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Charlie_Brown_Christmas
I think there must be something wrong with me, Linus.
Christmas is coming, but I’m not happy.
I don’t feel the way I’m supposed to feel.
I just don’t understand Christmas I guess.
I like getting presents and sending Christmas cards…
…and decorating trees and all that, but I’m still not happy.
I always end up feeling depressed.
It was a favorite of mine as a kid. For me, all the nativity reminds me of the war in Gaza and the Christian Nationalist movement infecting the US government and stripping away civil rights.
Generally the high extinction risk from compound crises (climate, plastic, etc.) has dispelled any notion that what I do here or happens to me matters at a greater scale.
If I ceased to exist this moment, it might cause a small amount of local harm, but little wake. These days, I’m a practicing absurdist, mostly that means I’m aware of my grief and dispair in fine detail, a geographic manifold I’ve well explored.
Ignorance and Want are no longer child wretches hiding in the fold of the robes of a Christmas spirit, rather now have become massive kaiju thundering across the countryside ravaging the population with withering gaze and breath of biting hyperborean frost, leaving a path of toxic wasteland in their wake.
(Plug that into generative AI systems.)
So yeah, in a holding pattern until January 2nd.
I mean, the point of the special is to find meaning in the holidays regardless of the rampant consumerism, but the impact of the message is dampened a bit by Hallmark putting out new charlie brown Christmas tree ornaments every year.
That said, it’s also okay not to have holiday spirit if you don’t find anything about this time of year meaningful. For many who aren’t practicing Christians, it’s a time to be with family because most companies tend to give days off anyway, but for those of us who have cut ties and don’t see the significance of decorating and whatnot, it’s perfectly fine to enjoy the time off without feeling festive.
Just kick Lucy in the face with cleats on and you will never feel depressed again Charlie.
Jólabókaflóð – forget gifts, exchange books and sit around a fire drinking hot chocolate
That is an amazing tradition!
Maybe you’re just getting older.
If it wasn’t for my kids, I wouldn’t even bother with the tree.
It’s obnoxious from start (last week Oct) to finish (1st week Jan). Shit music, saturation marketing, shit social obligations, travel and/or houseguests, waste of money, house is cluttered, etc. it’s draining.
I lost my dad to cancer about two week before last Christmas. And my birthday is a few days after Christmas as well. I’ll be damned if I ever feel like celebrating Christmas or my birthday ever again
I’m really sorry about your loss. Christmas is whatever, but I hope you can get to a place to truly appreciate your birthday.
I lost my sister suddenly 2 days before Christmas in 2008. The joy came back — after a fair amount of therapy and contemplation — and over time, life grew around the gaping hole.
A couple of quotes that I keep near me:
Yet, in a bizarre, backwards way, death is the light by which the shadow of all of life’s meaning is measured. Without death, everything would feel inconsequential, all experience arbitrary, all metrics and values suddenly zero.
Mark Manson
When you dull pain and hide it from yourself, you dull your joys as well.
Robin Hobb, Fool’s Fate (Tawny Man #3)
All the best for this holiday season, and all the ones that follow.
Overused but a favorite of mine:
Gotta have opposites, light and dark and dark and light, in painting. It’s like in life. Gotta have a little sadness once in awhile so you know when the good times come. I’m waiting on the good times now.
- Bob Ross
My mother passed at the same time last year. It’s been a tough year and Christmas things are just making me sad this year.
You’re not alone in this and I’ve been told it gets better.
So it’s felt like this to me basically since I became an adult. For one, I work in an industry where the holidays mean nothing. And two, now I have adult shit to do, so there isn’t a ton of time to just sit around baking and watching Christmas specials and what not. Also can’t really stand the consumerist side of things and while I do like giving gifts as a thing, I don’t like the idea of “just buy some shit” or “whoever gets the most presents wins.”
Now all that said, when I think back to what used to make the holidays special for me, I realized that was adults deliberately making the holidays special. And the shitty thing about being an adult (unless your SO is like, from the Clause family) is that you kind of have to do that for yourself, and you’re probably going to have to do boring adult shit to make that happen. Like, you might literally be putting something like “Bake cookies/Watch ‘The Grinch’” into your calendar. There is a lot of little things you can do as well - play some music, get some scented candles, stick a bowl of decorative pinecones out, etc.
I think this also helps a lot with other people, or in my case, my kids. I don’t have a ton of friends (I’m very much a person with a small circle, but all people i know I can call if i need help moving if that makes sense) but we do some small get togethers. With my kids, I try to do more of the things that make things feel special for them. Lights on the house I could take or leave (back to being lazy) but I do my best and I put them up, even though it was just a few days ago because that was the first day that wasn’t pouring where I was at home when it was light out. I make it a point to watch some Christmas movies (and let the kids come to a consensus on which) and bake some cookies or whatever. We usually go every year to that neighborhood where every house has cool lights, even if that is an hour drive away. Lots of little things like that.
Anyway, I feel like the holidays are very much a “fake it til you make it” scenario. I tend to think about it like “what do I remember that I liked about holidays” when I was a kid, and then force myself to do those things. What I’ve generally found is that there are definitely times I’ve regretted not doing anything like that, but I never regret when I forced myself to do something like this, and I rarely remember the “forced” part.
I realized that was adults deliberately making the holidays special. And the shitty thing about being an adult (unless your SO is like, from the Clause family) is that you kind of have to do that for yourself, and you’re probably going to have to do boring adult shit to make that happen. Like, you might literally be putting something like “Bake cookies/Watch ‘The Grinch’” into your calendar. There is a lot of little things you can do as well - play some music, get some scented candles, stick a bowl of decorative pinecones out, etc.
This is the most real advice I’ve seen on Lemmy. It really fucking sucked realizing that no one was going to make things special for me (mostly because I hated the realization that I was expecting someone/something else to make my life more fun). Celebrating holidays and doing seasonal things that are special for the time of year REALLY help break up the monotony of the grind of everyday life (work, kids, bills, house work, ad nauseum). It would be nice to have someone else create that magic for me, but… that doesn’t really happen as an adult. You have to make things fun for yourself, and for others if you can.
Stop waiting for a single (or a couple) days of the year to put effort in for enjoyment, do it every damn day.
I wonder if this is true for others but I’m just not close to my family. I think most people have smaller social circles today than they did 10 years ago.
Without close family, there’s a lot less to Christmas.
Looks like it will be a BROWN Christmas here this year. Which is a grim fucking reminder that we’ve fucked the planet and it is only going to get worse.
So. There’s that.
It’s not just brown here, which is super rare, it’s so warm that I can’t even take my daughter skating at the outdoor rink.
I live in SASKATCHEWAN
For me it’s definitely the weather. When i see Christmas lights and shit, but i walk around in shorts i just feel dreadful.
It will be a standing water Christmas for me
Could it be an age thing?
I’m 32.
I’ve had issues with it past maybe 3-6 years.- Listen at a Christmas radio
- Watch a Christmas movie/animations/cartoons
- Read Christmas books/comics
- Write your own Christmas stories
- Talk about Christmas
- Do your favorite Christmas’y thing
- Create a new Christmas’y habit
- Make a Christmas music playlist
- Create a Chistmas get-together
- Sing Christmas carols (alone or with someone(karaoke))
- Craft something Christmas’y
Listening at music, watching a movie and the radio has helped me reach some level of Christmas!
I’m guessing it has become more of a financial burden to be honest.
Choosing the right gifts, decorations, food. Etc.
Was just talking about this with a coworker yesterday. They’d noticed that in their neighborhood, the amount of decorations out were even less than the year before. No one left the area, just not putting stuff up anymore.
This is something I’ve felt more and more every year for all the holidays in the areas of the US I frequent. Halloween, Xmas, Easter, etc.
The stores are all decorated earlier than ever, but neighborhoods are barren.
I understand money is tight for many, but Christmas lights are pretty cheap and most people have old sets, it’s not like they’re consumable and need to be replaced every year. I wonder if people are just over it, don’t have the time, lack the spirit, or what.
I say all this as someone who hasn’t decorated for any holidays lately myself.
Because what is the point? I only bother with decorations because I have kids. After they grow up I won’t bother. Also yeah I don’t particularly want to get into it because it feels like I am taking the Christian’s side. They are sitting there putting women in jail for having miscarriages maybe I don’t want to associate with them even slightly.
I guess “getting into Christmas” probably means something different to everyone. For me it’s about reliving good memories of friends and family. Some of my favorite memories are decorating cookies with my kids, mixing batches fudge, sipping eggnog and coffee over pie and ice cream, or dancing with my kids to Christmas music.
So for Christmas I play Christmas music, setup a tree, make cookies and fudge, and send the treats and little mementos to friends and family around the country. This year I sent Christmas muffins, fudge, drawings my daughter made, little $1 bottles of peppermint schnapps with Cocoa packets, and other things like Santa socks that I divied up from a cheap multipack. That was the presents I sent out to all our friends and family.
But if I didn’t have those memories or enjoy baking, I doubt I would do much for it. So I suppose, ask yourself what getting into Christmas means to you, or take the time to define what you want it to mean to you, and then do the thing. If it’s taking a little bit of extra time to show family you are thinking of them, then a little home assembled Cocoa kit and a card might do it. You don’t need to go crazy with decorations or buying presents to get into Christmas, unless that is what you want it to mean to you.
