The word “holiday” derives from the word “holy days,” so even those who prefer to say “Happy Holidays,” rather than “Merry Christmas,” are mired in religious connotations.
I’ve taken to saying “Happy Sol Invictus Day.” I do it as an educational service. When people look confused I tell them to look it up, and then I walk away.
There is nothing holy about the holidays for me, not only because I am not religious, but because the “celebrations” are a severe interruption to the fun I have when there are no holidays.
I spend nearly every day adding meaning to my life by pursuing my purpose. The holidays interrupt my joy. I go from exercises designed to increase marginal utility, to activities of marginal futility. Eating food I’d prefer not to eat, drinking more than I prefer to drink, buying gifts people don’t really want, and receiving such gifts in return.
Everywhere I look people are grim and unhappy, standing in long lines, trapped in a social construct from which there seems to be no escape. The attempt to escape brings a social price that costs more than the value escape would bring.
Please don’t misunderstand. I am not a total Scrooge. I think Christmas is great for kids, and a source of joy also for parents. But for the rest of us, as far as I can tell from the way people behave, Christmas and the other holidays are mostly hell.
I’m glad they’re over for another year, so I can return to celebrating.
January 3, 2006 at 3:59 am
Why do they HAVE to interrupt you? You don’t have to eat the bad food or drink too much wine, do you?
January 3, 2006 at 5:22 am
Thank you for visiting again “Always Aroused Girl.”
Surely you have experienced the emotional backlash that comes from not eating the carbohydrate-confections others — especially family! — prepare for the holidays. It’s a crime you know!
And surely you have attended family events where the small talk drives one to drink. LOL
It doesn’t help that I like carbohydrates and alcohol and find them easier to resist when they are not being pushed at me, than they are when the pushers are omnipresent. Smile.
I am a highly disciplined man. But I am not superman. I am not even Nietzsche’s Overman, though I have aspirations.
Surely you, of all people, “Always Aroused Girl,” know the temptation of temptation. And surely you know the constraints of family, and how this leads us to do what we would, in a perfect world, prefer not to do.
I am glad to have your company here. I hope you visit often, just as I visit your site often. Your thoughts and struggles give extra meaning to my life. And I would humbly hope that I might do some of the same for you in return. All the best. — Meaning of Life
January 3, 2006 at 5:29 am
My point was that you make the CHOICE to do those things.
Things are easier for me to accept if I tell myself again and again that I’ve made the choice to do them–no one has forced them on me.
January 3, 2006 at 5:43 am
You’re up late Excited One, if, as I think, you live on Eastern Standard Time.
I agree. It is my choice. I accept and understand your point.
But should we want the acceptance of our choices to be easy? Or should we challenge the uncomfortable things we accept, and challenge ourselves “again and again” to justify them?
Isn’t here something fundamentally suspicious about choices we make where we have to tell ourselves “again and again” that they are the right choices? It is easy to be confused by confirmation bias, but so hard to construct “life experiments” to elliminate that bias.
Have I yet found a graceful exit from the Unholy Holidays? No. Have you yet found what you’re looking for? It seems not. But pain, and the acknowledgement of that pain, spurs us to keep looking. We should keep looking. All advances derives from the unreasonable people who keep looking. In the meantime, I celebrate the end of the Unholy Holidays.
And I celebrate you too. — Meaning of Life
January 3, 2006 at 5:53 am
And you are up very early, if your clock is correct.
I haven’t told myself that they are the “right” choices. They just ARE the choices I’ve made. Right, wrong…who knows. But for me there is some peace in knowing that those decisions weren’t forced on me. I chose them, good or evil.
East Coast, hmmm? Perhaps. But to bed now.