Why cant people just enjoy the holidays?

[Ghost Land]

The holiday is already ruined by endless consumerism.

Yes. YES. YES!

I'd like to see Christmas return to being a quaint religious festival celebrating the birth of Jesus with a family dinner, as opposed to a manufactured ordeal involving stressing out about gifts for at least a month each year. As a teenager getting badgered by my parents with the question "What do you want for Christmas? What do you want from these people? What do you want from these people?" was the bane of my existence in November and December, especially considering how often it seemed that even close family members would forget about my birthday, which lies right in the middle of "Silly Season" (that term borrowed from my middle-school tech ed teacher, and my birthday being on 21 December). Granted, my parents weren't cruel enough to give me combined presents; my birthday was always celebrated on 21 Dec, give or take a couple of days if it was an awkward day of the week or there was a conflict, as a completely separate celebration, but still. I always felt like a 21 June birthday would have been better; I'd never have school on my birthday, it would usually be acceptably warm (no guarantee, though, considering I've lived in Wisconsin all my life), and the presents would be spread out more evenly through the year as opposed to being concentrated in late December.

I refuse to listen to Christmas music before 22 December so I can enjoy my birthday first; it doesn't help that most radio stations start with it in your face sometime between mid-November and mid-December, nor does it help that most Christmas music is boring anyway. (That is, with the exception of Bob Rivers, whose 1988 debut album Twisted Christmas I have on CD.)

[Ralshia]

Seriously? This makes no sense. I thought the whole story was about someone being ridiculed for being different, but then proving how useful they are. It's literally a TAKEDOWN of racism

[Ungvarnfjall]

Where there's a will (to be an asshole,) there's a way (to be an asshole.)

[Uiiop]

Seriously? This makes no sense. I thought the whole story was about someone being ridiculed for being different, but then proving how useful they are. It's literally a TAKEDOWN of racism

By saying different races have unique abilities that are useful to the "raceless" majority.
Seriously though it's much broader in scope than that and you're making sound worse it than it is.

[Tronn]

Seriously? This makes no sense. I thought the whole story was about someone being ridiculed for being different, but then proving how useful they are. It's literally a TAKEDOWN of racism

Ikr! this is viewed so wrong.

[The Niceties of Normal Moral Constraints]

Because miserable urban liberals need to be offended so they can feel alive for a couple minutes

I FIND THAT OFFENSIVE.

[<deep breath>]

Gaaaaah....Yep, feels as amazing as hang gliding from an erupting volcano, but with less horrible, horrible death.

...
Christmas lights are still on display (although some have to be funded by citizens' groups, because councils are broke).
...

My landlord's solution is especially brilliant. Tenants can get fifty whole entire dollars off next month's rent, if they win the Christmas Decoration Contest! Ergo, tenants spend hundreds of dollars in order to win $50, and landlord gets lots of great new photos for the website for only $50!

Genius.

[Chernoslavia]

I hate the holidays. They remind me of my family fighting and the years I spent working a retail job. The same god damned songs playing over and over again for two months straight everywhere you go. Every poor bastard still in customer service mindlessly saying "happy holidays!" or "merry Christmas!" as if the sheep need a verbal queue to celebrate consumerism dressed up in the facade of giving.

You must be fun at parties. Toughen the fuck up.

[Mardla]

You see, periodicals and news sources need to get you to read them and get other people to read them. So they will report on really stupid shit just to achieve that. Not that there aren't plenty of pinkos of this insane, inane persuasion, rest assured there are, but they get coverage because being insane and inane gets attention.

[Uiiop]

I hate the holidays. They remind me of my family fighting and the years I spent working a retail job. The same god damned songs playing over and over again for two months straight everywhere you go. Every poor bastard still in customer service mindlessly saying "happy holidays!" or "merry Christmas!" as if the sheep need a verbal queue to celebrate consumerism dressed up in the facade of giving.

You must be fun at parties. Toughen the fuck up.

I understand their pain even if i am able to ignore all that and keep up my holiday spirit.

[Internationalist Bastard]

Have you seen some people’s families?

[Rojava Free State]

Everything is racist. Even being colorblind is appearently racist now, so i guess Martin Luther King Jr was by that standard as bad as George Wallace

[Cannot think of a name]

Making criticism even dumb criticisms of holiday themed material doesn't actually prevent one from just enjoying the holidays.
You're just letting them get into your holiday spirit. It's not like you can't think some critics have a point for say Rudolph and still find that movie enjoyable. Though in this case apparently the person who made the Rudolph video was joking.
The "Timeless classic" vs "100% evil" dichotomy people internalized in their heads for criticism is bad.

So much this. The way I imagine the outrage at the outrage machine gets fed is something along the lines of some people sitting around and hearing the same fucking goddamn christmas song for the four hundredth time and saying to the person next to them, "Did she just ask what was in that drink? Is he drugging her?" "Haha, it's a Cosby Christmas!" "Right?"

And then someone, like a meme person who doesn't make their own jokes but carries other people's jokes around hoping clever works like osmosis, they hear that conversation and later go, "Ha, hey. Baby It's Cold Outside is a rape song!" Some people kind of laugh or go, "Well, okay yeah, it's a little creepy." and others go "OMFG WHAT THE FUCK CHRISTMAS HATE RAAAAGE!"

If, upon your 100th viewing of Rudolph haven't critically evaluated it in the context of your current understanding of the world whaaaaaaaaat the hell are you doing? How can you watch it that many times and not think about it in a new way just to get through it? It doesn't mean we're not enjoying the holidays, but if you're jumping up and down and demanding that we follow tradition and do exactly the same shit every 12 months we're gonna start evaluating it just so we don't gnaw our tongues off in boredom.

Hell, we haven't even gotten to the problems of 'Last Christmas'...you're with someone new this year but you wrote a song about your ex? I don't think you're over your ex, dude. I think you owe it them to be honest with the new person you're with, that you're using them to get back at your ex and you're both having a shitty Christmas while the ex has probably legitimately moved on. That's not me not being able to enjoy that shitty, shitty song. It's me having to hear it once every two hours.

[Farnhamia]

So I am just getting ready for the holidays to spend time with my family and actually unwind for a period of time right... and then I find the articles. The articles that call certain songs racist, bullying, and whatever. Example, Rudolph the red nosed reindeer is a timeless classic that surely everyone can enjoy right? No, of course not in todays world. Apparently the film is bigoted, racist, and abusive. Thats not even the point of the film. The point of the film is to discourage discrimination. It literally shows its wrong to not include Rudolph because he has a red nose and the movie has a happy ending showing all reindeer can get along. Another example is White Christmas. Apparently the song is racist because of its name and it promotes white supremacy. What horseshit. It means white as in snowy. It means a winter wonderland full of snow. These people are so stupid the song should be renamed A Snowy Christmas. Just wow. I am not trying to bash a certain political group here, just a certain type of people. Like seriously it feels like these people can never enjoy themselves or have any sort of fun social behavior without complaining something is racist. It is just depressing at this point.

this narrative that people cant enjoy holidays because people are calling things racist or whatever shows youre coming from a privileged position, you can ignore the libtards calling something racist.

the people who ACTUALLY cant enjoy the holidays are too poor to. You can't ignore poverty bud, you can ignore middle class identity politics.

Hello. It might interest you to know that "libtards" is a derogatory, trolling term and so you are *** warned for trolling. ***

Please review the rules, which are posted conveniently at the top of this forum and in the Moderation forum.

[Rio Cana]

I think a better question would be, why are people with money and that are living in a first world nation complaining. What is wrong with that picture.

Meanwhile, the have nots in some far away place seem to be happier. Uploaded five days ago. Somewhere in Venezuela - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PV1ylGMUZog

[Toaslandia]

Maybe it's because half the family is a bunch of mega Trump supporters and the other half are reasonable, middle class socialists. You can guess which side I'm on and how that goes when we're all together.

[Chernoslavia]

Maybe it's because half the family is a bunch of mega Trump supporters and the other half are reasonable, middle class socialists. You can guess which side I'm on and how that goes when we're all together.

So you hate each other for having different political opinions. Yeah, I'm very certain that you're the reasonable ones here

[Aclion]

I, too, become very upset when people invite me to think about media instead of consuming it mindlessly. How dare these people cause me to be aware of something I was privileged enough to ignore. It should be a crime.

If they were indeed thinking about media instead of mindlessly consuming it they wouldn't be parroting the edgelord interpretation of shit and would actually do the research to see if that interpretation is appropriate.

[Prusenreich]

Where there's a will (to be an asshole,) there's a way (to be an asshole.)

Yep that and no matter what you say you will probably offend someone

[South Ccanda]

I think a better question would be, why are people with money and that are living in a first world nation complaining. What is wrong with that picture.

Meanwhile, the have nots in some far away place seem to be happier. Uploaded five days ago. Somewhere in Venezuela - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PV1ylGMUZog

uhh, because people in first world countries cant have problems?
I don't mean to offend, but I can't think of a nicer way to say this
that's a really dumb thing to think.

[Page]

I am firmly of the belief that the majority, perhaps the vast majority of controversies in which someone is supposedly offended by this or that, are false flags manufactured by far-right trolls, so they can respond to it, so they can keep saying "everyone is offended these days, but I'm a smart freethinking person who isn't politically correct!"

[Farburg]

No Tronn, dear chestnut, we are not allowed to celebrate our patriarchal, western, Christian and capitalist festival. Happy Kwanza.

Christmas time is actually originally pagan, the consumerist part is only half a century old

[Farburg]

Maybe it's because half the family is a bunch of mega Trump supporters and the other half are reasonable, middle class socialists. You can guess which side I'm on and how that goes when we're all together.

Being Socialist isn't inherently reasonable, there are lots of non-reasonable socialists.

[Deltanium]

True. All of those college students... God. Most of them are the definition of irrational and unreasonable. Whenever they get into political arguments, they are unbelievably unwilling to compromise. I also think it is due to a sort of leftist political indoctrination. I fear for the adults of 10-20 years in the future.

[Aclion]

I am firmly of the belief that the majority, perhaps the vast majority of controversies in which someone is supposedly offended by this or that, are false flags manufactured by far-right trolls, so they can respond to it, so they can keep saying "everyone is offended these days, but I'm a smart freethinking person who isn't politically correct!"

If that were the case you would expect these controversies to originate form right wing outlets, yet when you read these stories they're responding to articles in left wing outlets.

[New Genoa]

Personally, I find it greatly amusing to see right wing blowhards lose their shit over silly stuff like this.

So war on Christmas is ok in my book.