Christmas - do you love it or hate it?

Now that I'm actually out of bed and at a real keyboard:

My spiritual/religious holiday is Winter Solstice. I usually get together with people on or on the weekend before, to celebrate. Christmas for me is more about family and other friends. I don't get to celebrate directly with family - them being in Florida these days, and I never wanted to travel there at that time of year, anyway. Even before COVID. Travel during holidays is an utter pain, and it is bad to think of having snow delay my trip home - and now, having to get poultry sitters. The woman who takes care of my chickens when I take off at other times of year - I really really don't want her traipsing down my backyard ice with hazard to herself to feed and water the chickens. I would rather take the risk myself. So - I send gifts and spend as much time on the phone with family as possible. (Close family at this point is my brother, his wife, and my brother's two daughters. Plus the first daughter's husband and their son, my little grand nephew, who it is really fun to buy for.)

I also like sending out cards. I call them Christmas cards although I never buy them with religious sentiments on them. My friends come from various faiths, or in some cases, none at all.

I enjoy putting up a tree some years - I hadn't done so for a variety of years in my old house, and had no time (what with surgery that December) the first year I moved up here. I had one the following year, and may well do a small one this year. I do like putting lights outdoors - and with the log home it is easy to string them up the alternating posts of log in front.

I don't care for the Hallmark movies... but then again, I don't watch more than, say, three movies a year to begin with (years that I'm laid up after surgery or breaking a bone are different, of course).

Oh a weird thing about me: I much prefer the Christian Christmas carols to the majority of secular holiday Christmas songs out there. Probably an abiding dislike of Bing Crosby and Ella Fitzgerald. And growing up in a Catholic school system where we got to participate in the festive Christmas carol singing choir - more fun than anything else that ever happened there.


Yesterday was my largest spiritual holiday of the year - and we had a full moon with it. I had lost four friends during the past year (November through October), and went outside to commemorate and talk with them, and wish them peace on the other side of the veil - and to let them know I remembered. I also, more briefly, added in my late cat, Obi-Wan, and one public figure of note who'd passed on. This past Friday, several of us got together to perform a ceremony online (via Zoom) since we cannot meet in person. Not the same, but better than not at all...

As MG noted, I'm glad we can discuss and talk about the upcoming holidays - Christmas and any of the others - and it remains a discussion WITH each other.
 
I also like sending out cards. I call them Christmas cards although I never buy them with religious sentiments on them. My friends come from various faiths, or in some cases, none at all.
Same here. I love sending cards, and I actually put thought into the cards I buy (meaning I don't just go to Walmart and get a box of cards), but I never get cards with overtly religious sentiments, and I always buy one of the non-religious rolls of Christmas stamps. Last year, it was stamps of winter plants.
 
A little first taste of Christmas

49624
 
More to the point, I'm not afraid of death, but the actual process of dying, I'm not that crazy about. :laugh:

I have no fear of be
Same here. I love sending cards, and I actually put thought into the cards I buy (meaning I don't just go to Walmart and get a box of cards), but I never get cards with overtly religious sentiments, and I always buy one of the non-religious rolls of Christmas stamps. Last year, it was stamps of winter plants.

Back when I was married, we sent a lot of xmas cards. I designed them, and got one of my printing vendors to add them to a print run of something else for me (I fixed the messed up artwork some of his customers submitted to him in return).

CD
 
No, I have no proof. Religion just seems a simpler and "saner" solution to deal with the origin of the first physical particles, the infinite cosmos and the concept of self-awareness and biologically unexplainable things like species-extrinsic (non-intraspecific) compassion than trying to stick to mere senses, sporadic calculations, scientific (often subjectively orientated and qualitative) studies and quantitative measurements made during the last couple hundred years of human history.
If you found a tribe of native Amazonian's who had never experience any contact with the outside world. You then dropped a battery operated alarm clock set for 12.00 am into their midst by parachute. When the alarm went off playing the hallelujah chorus I guarantee the would build an alter and worship it. When the batteries ran out the person who found it would be crucified and they would go back to their BA (before alarm) life of hunting and debauchery. Ignorance is bliss in the context of religious indoctrination.
 
Nobody knows what kinds of habits and belief systems existed earlier than in known historical records (which were mostly written or artistically supervised by sporadic patricians).
"The oldest known cave paintings are more than 44,000 years old (art of the Upper Paleolithic), found in both the Franco-Cantabrian region in western Europe, and in the caves in the district of Maros (Sulawesi, Indonesia). " These are interesting how do you interpret them?
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I've always loved Christmas. First as a child and then vicariously through my children and Grandchildren.

Christmas Day has a special significance now as seven years ago on Christmas Day we welcomed Jacob (Jakey Boy) into the family.

50531
 
Loved Christmas when I was a kid as it was a family affair, I have been an adult for a long time now, grandma and mum are both gone so it has lost it's sparkle. I enjoy sending cards and giving presents but now it is more about having a break from work.
Far too much emphasis on spending money you don't have and getting stressed.

Whoever/where ever you are, enjoy the festivities how you want to :cheers:
 
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