Why I Still Hate Christmas

John S explained why he hates Christmas last year, but it’s all still true:

Today is December 18^th, which means we’re a week away from the 25^th, the two-month anniversary of Christmas. So now seems as good of a time as any to explain why I hate this “holiday” with a fiery passion.

It probably doesn’t come as much of a shock to you to hear that I hate Christmas: For one, I like hating things that are popular. More substantively, though, Christmas combines two of my least favorite things in the world: religion and consumerism. At Christmas, people are encouraged to buy a bunch of stuff that they don’t need in order to celebrate the birth of a god that doesn’t exist.

Why I Hate Christmas

Today is December 18^th, which means we’re a week away from the 25^th, the two-month anniversary of Christmas. So now seems as good of a time as any to explain why I hate this “holiday” with a fiery passion.

It probably doesn’t come as much of a shock to you to hear that I hate Christmas: For one, I like hating things that are popular. More substantively, though, Christmas combines two of my least favorite things in the world: religion and consumerism.  At Christmas, people are encouraged to buy a bunch of stuff that they don’t need in order to celebrate the birth of a god that doesn’t exist.

Whether or not you’d like to admit it, it’s hard to deny that Christmas brings out the worst of both of these already-pretty-bad things. Every year, hundreds of billions of dollars are spent on Christmas, plenty of it horribly misallocated; advertising and the general holiday spirit inspire a sense of “rewarding yourself” and “remembering others” that can only be done through a commercial transaction.* As for the “religious” element of the holiday, Christmas cloyingly spoon-feeds us sweet and formulaic messages about the value of family and generosity: It translates moral and religious dogma into clichés and after-school specials.