Christmas shouldn't work anymore (but it does)

Merry Christmas, dear Readers!

It's the Christmas season once more! Time for arguments over whether to use water or milk for hot chocolate (there is a correct answer).

And thanks to fruitcake, even the trash on Christmas, it smells so sweetly!

Christmas truly is not your normal average everyday. It brings families together, and breaks them too.

Hmm.

I don't know what to talk about.

I could rank Christmas music, I could defend fruitcake (I LOVE fruitcake), I could talk about Hallmark movies, holiday cookies, or decorations.

But I don't want to.

What do the readers want? An undergraduate analysis of communism? A love letter straight from the heart to Toro Inoue?

I doubt it.

What if I just talked about what interests me? Something at least loosely related to Christmas? But what would that be?

I've sat laying on my couch staring at the ceiling for the past 30 minutes trying to figure out what to write about.

I could talk about how Hallmark movies always end with someone giving up their career/dreams for small-town romance, why is "abandoning ambition" treated as the happy ending? What values are these movies actually selling? But I don't find that very interesting.

I wonder why we've commodified Christmas to death.

Hey, that might be something!

Welcome to the Sidetracked Christmas special!

Get ready, sit down with a cup of hot chocolate (I'll let you decide how to make it) and get ready.

Not too ready, as this isn't that special.

I started writing about how Christmas has been stripped of religious meaning and sold back to us as consumerism, but halfway through I realized I was boring myself. Everyone knows this. What I find more interesting is that it still works somehow. So keep in mind, I'm writing this about "modern" Christmas, not "tradtional" Christmas. Christmas has been commodified a lot. Christmas decorations appear in stores before Thanksgiving or even Halloween.

There's a Christmas for everyone! Religious, secular, or barely at all! No matter how you celebrate (or even if you don't) you've likely experienced chestnuts roasting and burns in the third degree. The world feels like it's in loverly.

Corporations are certainly a part of modern Christmas. Everyone has experienced the awkward pressure coming from commercialisation. And yet there are still many moments of genuine human connections in spite of it.

Suddenly everyone is a part of Christmas, whether they like it or not. Christmas is in the walls, and under the floors. Every grocery store, every website, nearly every business celebrates. Decorations:

Tinsel, baubles and anything they found in the supply closet. I remember going to a police station and even they had tinsel hanging from the fire sprinklers.

Of course, there is also Christmas themed consumerism! Why yes, I'll take mugs, blankets, throw pillows, phone cases, anything really!

Even if I can only use them for 3 weeks! Shopping, decorating, and plenty of snow.

I have had some Santa/Christmas stickers on my fridge, and I never bothered to remove them. No joke, I only realised that fact when I was writing this and happened to glance at my refrigerator.

Humans however, are awfully resilient. One of our best worst properties. I won't go into what it means to be human, I don't want this to be Toro 2: Electric Boogaloo, but we find actual meaning even in spaces that are hopelessly commercialised.

Your local chain grocery store isn't celebrating because they adore the joy and jolly of the Christmas season and the taste of hot chocolate, if they were, why pay workers minimum wage? No, rather, it adds atmosphere and probably attracts customers.

Yet despite all this, here we are. We find a meaning in Christmas, a season of giving and family.

Despite the relative lack of meaning to Christmas, it's still a time of joy for many (like me!), and for many, a time to reunite with relatives, friends, and that one bigoted uncle.

Christmas somehow manages to bring the world together, in a way no other holiday does.

Truly miraculous that genuine warmth survives this much capitalism.

We know we're being manipulated. We all see the manufactured urgency (a plate I can only use 3 weeks a year? Sign me up!). We recognize the performance pressure.

And yet somehow we still get a little excited, a little jolly, and we still want to make it special for the ones we love.

The human desire for connection (oh god maybe this IS Toro 2: Electric Boogaloo) is so strong it survives being wrapped up and sold back to us. At least they give it a nice bow on top.

Maybe that's the real Christmas miracle, not that it's been commercialized, but that it means something anyway.

So yeah, Christmas is commercialized to death

The decorations appear earlier every year, the pressure to spend and perform grows, and corporations have turned sincerity into a product line. But somewhere there's still something real. And it's enough.

It's shaping up to be a wonderful holiday, this Christmas feels like the very first Christmas to me.

You better watch out, you better not cry because tonight, things are as good as they seem to be. Santa Claus is coming to town.

Merry Christmas.

Yours truly, AlignedTrack432.