Atheism, Christmas, Capitalism

Intro

Merry Christmas everyone! I hope it went well or at least not awkwardly. I know Christmas is still a tough time for people who are struggling with their family’s politics and also their religious convictions. I have never had to deal with that as it just never comes up. I consider myself “blessed” in that manner. Honestly, I am disappointed as I have spent years on atheist forums and groups that have been filled with stories about arguing with family members about how their god is impossible and thus I’ve picked up so many points and counter points that I have never used.

Regardless, I still have something to complain about. So please, enjoy my christmas ramblings as my gift to you!

What does Christmas mean?

I tend to think about the meanings of the holidays trying to understand how I should approach my own relationship to them as an atheist. Christmas has an obvious direct contradiction to atheism in that it’s an alleged celebration of the birth of Jesus. But we all know this is bullshit at this point and are just pretending so the old cartoons make sense while many of the newer ones are generic christmas branding.

Unless you can convince me The Grinch knew god, you can’t convince me christmas is a christian exclusive holiday.

So christmas, despite it’s name, is fairly easy to reconcile with my own lack of religious beliefs. Same with nearly all federal holidays. Some of the specific ones like lent and passover and whatever else don’t even register to me. But despite my lack of care for the religious aspects of christmas, I am still upset at the hyper capitalism of the modern day christmas season.

Commie Bullshit

Capitalism has destroyed any semblance of christianity or paganism in Christmas to maximize participation in the festivities. The only thing that exists is christianity branding that has the same vibes as Kevin Heart promoting Crypto or Sports betting. This hyper capitalism has for the longest time defeated me. It’s so blatantly obvious that the goal is to drive sales of mass produced garbage so that the capitalist class can have a very merry christmas shoveling expensive electronics to kids to mine their data and cheap nostalgia bait at adults who want to relive a time when they were happy that I have been driven to tears by the vapidity of it all especially with the amount of suffering that still exists within our own communities.

However, I think that it is wrong to allow these overwhelming feelings of defeatism to consume one’s mind this time of year. It does no good except take out one more person who has put on John Nada’s glasses and sees the truth behind it all. And no I don’t think we should rally the troops and make more to distribute to everyone else. I think we should take smaller steps to just change the gift giving traditions back to something more sustainable.

You should do all the usual obvious things to make the holidays better for everyone like donate to food pantries and donate to Toy Drives (Avoid the red buckets though), but those aren’t as easy to change as your family traditions are around gift giving. For years my family exchanged piles of cheap gifts because a fully engulfed tree was what we liked to see, but we now see how much wasted junk we received and shared in the process.

Stop Buying Garbage and Think!

Nobody wants that “Mens Gift Multi-Tool Flashlight Bottle Opener” you bought for $15 by the shampoo aisle, but because you feel like you need something to gift to people you get it and some candies to gift to whoever because a gift card is “so impersonal.” Ah but you have so many gifts to buy you can’t afford a real good multi-tool like a Leatherman or a Swiss because its way out of budget. And in our specific case, it was more fun seeing all those gifts under the tree taking up space than it was seeing one small but really nice gift. I wonder if this is a studies psychological phenomenon at this point.

We all needed to come to an agreement that it was no longer sustainable to buy like 4-6 $5-$20 gifts just so everyone had a bunch of stuff to open especially since it more or less was wasted or forgotten about shortly after. So we swapped to a Dirty Santa format where everyone brings one thing and we fight over it in a formal manner. It still suffers from Shampoo Aisle Men’s Multi-Tool, but it has significantly cut down wasteful spending.

Now, I usually bring something I enjoyed through out the year. Like this year, I brought a travel mug, a set of loose leaf teabags, and a flavor of tea I really enjoyed from my favorite tea house. After the exchange I talked to my cousin’s girlfriend who won it and told her all about my favorite tea house/coffee shop and told her she should try it the next time the two of them are in town. I view it as a glimpse into my life and how I enjoy my time.

Similarly, I purchased a whole bunch of Asimov and Analog Magazines to hand out to friends and family. These paper magazines have brought me a lot of joy and comfort while helping me break a phone addiction. These magazines mean a lot to me and they’re cheap enough that if no one reads it I don’t care, it’s very much the thought that I care about.

The 4 Somethings

I also want to steal a gift exchange plan from a co-worker to use with Jay so we no longer have to worry about who won christmas. He and his wife get each other 4 gifts.

Something you want Something you need Something you wear and something you read

This I think allows for mostly thoughtful gifts which is what I really want to experience with my partner. I would prefer an intimate gift that makes me think of something between us than nearly any material object that’s just expensive.

Conclusions

Christmas has had nothing to do with christianity ever and you’re coping if you thought otherwise. I really think we should work on ways to minimize the talons of capitalism from it, but that’s true for nearly all things. In fact, for new years you should probably just work on sussing out every bit of capitalistic excess you can from your life.

Anyways, I hope today was something enjoyable or at least tolerable. If it sucked, please send me an email if you want to vent about it. I won’t publish shit, but I do like to listen!