On the Nature of Things | Forum

Folks,

I’ve been wondering how we forum folk like to spend Xmas?

A few years ago, our little family decided to drop the ‘Xmas’ label and celebrate the holiday as a winter solstice. We decorate the house with natural stuff from the forest around us, have a hearty meal together and send our greetings to wider family and friends. However, we don’t worry about the commercial hype that seems to kick off every November and I don’t even notice it these days. We witness the turning of the year, as the lengthening shadows halt for a moment and move back towards springtime. It has meaning about the passing time, memories and future. It has become quite special for us.

How do you like to spend yours?

Alex.

manolo wrote:Folks,

I’ve been wondering how we forum folk like to spend Xmas?

A few years ago, our little family decided to drop the ‘Xmas’ label and celebrate the holiday as a winter solstice. We decorate the house with natural stuff from the forest around us, have a hearty meal together and send our greetings to wider family and friends. However, we don’t worry about the commercial hype that seems to kick off every November and I don’t even notice it these days. We witness the turning of the year, as the lengthening shadows halt for a moment and move back towards springtime. It has meaning about the passing time, memories and future. It has become quite special for us.

How do you like to spend yours?

Alex.

Very much my feeling too. To me Christmas is increasingly a going back to natalis solis invictus. When days start growing again and nature starts getting ready for rebirth.

My preference is pious reflection on the difference between knowledge and experience. I see the germ of that reflection in the previous two comments.

Why would an impassable God want to experience joy and suffering? Why would an omniscient God feel knowledge without experience is insufficient, and why would he want to experience doubt and temptation?

We have a twelve-year old and she loves the commercial aspects. She genuinely loves the giving almost as much as the getting, picking out gifts with great care using my money

I string up Christmas lights on the house in memory of my late father, who loved them, and because it is a gift to the street. It still comes back to honoring the importance and universality of human experience.

Traveling to spend time with family is Christmas for our family. Buying presents is stressful and getting everyone dressed for a Christmas Eve service is distressing. I enjoy the beautiful music of the service and I feel a connection to something there even though I couldn't tell you what that one specific thing was in particular. The meals that you eat with each other and the time spent talking about the past and the future with time to share with each other is so incredibly good to have. I don't remember specific presents I ever got and I don't know if my kids could tell you what they got last year or the year before that or anything before two years before, but they always want to go see my in laws and my father for Christmas. I think we celebrate the time that we have to spend with each other.

Oh and I love to put up my trees and my ceramic village. I have a bunch of little painted ceramic houses with lights that I put up on my family room along with the little villagers all dressed nicely for the holiday. My Dad gave them to me a couple of years ago after he decided that it was too much work and would rather have them displayed somewhere children could look at them in wonder. I was able to give my children a memory that I have shared with my family.

i had intended to visit my ailing parents but instead decided to attend court and beg forgiveness on late payements for council rates which doubled this year and are now beyond my single income's household, prison time and then homelessness seemed a tad too good an oppurtunity for an ungreatful wretch like me.

i most prefer christmas to be spent working and meals to be skipped so i can fund other peoples comfy socialist existence and hope next year i can earn them even more relaxed breaks from the daily grind of sending me bills and voting themselves higher pay.

In [non-christian] Japan, at least in the case of the young, Christmas has been recast as a romantic season.

The ideal, from the girl's point of view, is a romantic dinner at a high end hotel.

The ideal, from the guy's point of view, is to have a room booked at the same high end hotel that ends up being used.

New Year is the closest analogue to Christmas.

Anyways, I like to spend the season as quietly as possible.

We have a twelve-year old and she loves the commercial aspects. She genuinely loves the giving almost as much as the getting, picking out gifts with great care using my money

So, then. A socialist.

We like spending our Christmas the old fashioned way. We nominate a guy to be the Yule king, give him everything he wants for a while, and then we burn him as a sacrifice against it staying winter for a whole year.

Ask me how we do Thanksgiving...

Demon of Undoing wrote:

We have a twelve-year old and she loves the commercial aspects. She genuinely loves the giving almost as much as the getting, picking out gifts with great care using my money

So, then. A socialist.

We like spending our Christmas the old fashioned way. We nominate a guy to be the Yule king, give him everything he wants for a while, and then we burn him as a sacrifice against it staying winter for a whole year.

Ask me how we do Thanksgiving...

A socialist Household indeed
Except for that angel who gets a tree stuffed up her ass every year.

With Christians.

Demon of Undoing wrote:
We like spending our Christmas the old fashioned way. We nominate a guy to be the Yule king, give him everything he wants for a while, and then we burn him as a sacrifice against it staying winter for a whole year.

Ask me how we do Thanksgiving...

I'm guessing that you eat the guy that you fattened up last Christmas....

Mr. Perfect wrote:With Christians.

And a very Merry Shintomas to you too.

In what must be one of the greatest marketing coups of all time, "Christmas Dinner" in Japan has been synonymous with KFC since the 1970's

Typhoon wrote:In what must be one of the greatest marketing coups of all time, "Christmas Dinner" in Japan has been synonymous with KFC since the 1970's

No Kidding? That is wild.

Doc wrote:

Typhoon wrote:In what must be one of the greatest marketing coups of all time, "Christmas Dinner" in Japan has been synonymous with KFC since the 1970's

No Kidding? That is wild.

No kidding.

About 1% of the population in Japan is Christian.

So while Japan has adopted much of the modern symbolism of Christmas, x-mass trees, lights, carols, cakes, etc., the underlying religious basis has no meaning for 99% of the population. So it has evolved, or been manipulated by advertising, as a "happy time" which translates into a romantic evening for the young and a "traditional" KFC dinner for families.

I suppose one could argue that it's an ongoing evolution of the Winter Solstice celebration which was adopted by Christianity

The traditional celebrations are reserved for the New Year.

I suppose one could argue that it's an ongoing evolution of the Winter Solstice celebration which was adopted by Christianity

"Colonel of Truth" logical fallacy

Typhoon wrote:(...) I suppose one could argue that it's an ongoing evolution of the Winter Solstice celebration which was adopted by Christianity (...)

Well, God's existence is doubtful, the winter solstice isn't...

Nonc Hilaire wrote:

I suppose one could argue that it's an ongoing evolution of the Winter Solstice celebration which was adopted by Christianity

"Colonel of Truth" logical fallacy

Just humour so poetic license is invoked.

Our recent Christmases have been far from normal.

In 2011 the wife already had foot drop (her ankle had stopped working) which puzzled the doctors, but which with hindsight was the first symptom of what was to come. We still had a normal family Christmas however. Four days later she had the brain haemorrhage, and you all know what followed.

In 2012 it was only six weeks after she died, I was dreading Christmas, and certainly did not want to spend it at home, some good friends stepped in and invited round and it was an unexpectedly pleasant day.

This year we are having a full traditional family Christmas at my house, my two sons and my younger son's delightful partner (have lost one woman from our otherwise little male coterie, have gained another) on Christmas day and friends round to join us on Boxing day (26th Dec). The tree is up and decorated, as is the rest of the house decorated. Our piece de resistance are two splendid large gilded plastic cherubs of the utmost vulgarity.

We don't have turkey (too bland), the family tradition is pheasant