No.
Here's the thing. People get all worked up about whether it is "Christmas" or "Hannukah" or "Kwanzaa" or "Holidays" or whatever. People fall into the lure of commercialism and traditionalism and whatever the Hell else.
But, going back into time, that isn't what it was all about back in the beginning. It was about gathering together to fight back against the shortest day and longest, darkest, coldest night with hope and joy.
And I admit, it took me a long, long time to understand that.
When I was a kid, it was like a Norman Rockwell exploded in our home every Thanksgiving after dinner while the Dallas Cowboys were on the television to be picked up and packed away once more on New Years' Day after the parades while the Bowl games were on. And I looked at the holidays with all the avarice of a child. What joy, what excitement, what was in it for me?
A couple of decades in, I was working the detention units. And you don't just shut down and send murderers, rapists, and thieves back out on the streets because it happens to be Christmas. Someone had to work, and that someone was me. And I got so incredibly sick of assholes who took the childhood avarice I'd experienced to all new heights and thinking I should treat them somehow better than they'd treated their victims because there happened to be Christmas decorations in the day room.
Yeah, welcome to the true naughty list, motherfucker, where you don't even rate coal and switches.
Christmas was just another day as far as I was concerned.
But, that changed. Not completely. I was still working with the inmates.
However, with enough seniority, I could have taken the Holidays off. I didn't. Instead, I let the ones who had to travel for Thanksgiving have that off, and the ones with small kids at home have Christmas. (The party animal drunkards could kiss my ass for New Years', though.) I learned how to give. Not material things, but spirit.
And then there was the woman I shacked up with and eventually married. So, there were aspects that would make PornHub aficionados blush. "I'm dreaming of a white Christmas..."
Eventually, I had enough of working the detention units. I worked a hotel for one year and, man, the murderers, rapists, and thieves have nothing on the entitled public! Although, in all fairness, I was pretty jaded by then. Perhaps, just perhaps, the majority of them weren't as bad as they came across. Unlike some of the previous posters, I automatically assumed that everybody I ran across was an egocentric little twatwaffle. It amazed me when I ran across somebody else who wasn't in it for everything they could get for themselves and their people but just gave and gave. Not of their money. Not things. That's easy. But, of their time, of their compassion, of their joy and hope. Of themselves.
Then, it was teaching at a local college. And with a couple of weeks off AND a bonus that was just almost an entire month's paycheck, Norman Rockwell was back. With a vengeance. Not for me and not for the wife. We were just fine with The Story of O Christmas that would make Santa blush and Mrs. Clause ask "so, what time will you be home, honey?" No, we did it for the other people in our lives, family and friends and the occasional stray we picked up that either didn't have anybody else or else couldn't be with who they had.
But, our checkered, often misspent youth caught up with us. We were reclassified as disabled and I became virtually housebound with her virtually bedridden. It was... a problematic time. Forget gifts and decorations, food and shelter was questionable more than once. Friends and family drifted off. And, yeah, our Private Christmas Porn became a ghost of Christmasses past.
But, we had each other, a dog, and four cats. And that was all the hope, joy, and peace (well, joy and hope anyway) either of us needed to make the longest, darkest, coldest time of the year merry and bright.
Then came a Christmas where I didn't have her anymore. Or anyone except my dog and three surviving cats. There were no decorations, but there hadn't been for years. There were no gifts given or received. But, there hadn't been much by way of those either for a number of years. Food (such as it was) and shelter (such as it is) were handled. Barely.
The next year was a Lit-mas for me. And it was all I really needed to lift my spirits during the long, cold, dark night of the soul. People all around the globe gave, not physical things, but of their time and their energy as we cheered each other, gave each other hope, brought each other peace...
Or so I thought at the time. But, the less said about old news, the better.
The next Christmas, though... last Christmas... when I'd given up on Christmas... was something unique in my experiences. Bob Cratchet would have been green with envy. (And PornHub would gnaw on its own liver.) Only myself, the dog, and two surviving cats were here in our den. But, reaching through the Aether through electronics (and via the post office), we found hope, joy, and peace in each other (not to mention some rather fabulous cookies and fudge!) to fight against the encroaching darkness and became lights for each other.
It's Christmas time again. Covid Christmas.
Or Hannukah. Or Kwanzaa. Or "the holidays." Or whatever you choose to call it.
It is the darkest, coldest, loneliest, most depressing, and oppressive time of the year. The time when our ancestors fought back against the storm raging without and within with joy and laughter and feasting and began the traditions handed down to today.
And, good people, if ever there was a year that NEEDED that cheer, isn't it this one?
Hans Christian Anderson ~ The Fir Tree
https://voca.ro/1lulaA0SpHXa
The day is going to come anyway. Do what you may to make yours a good day.
