It’s obvious that Christmas is, by far, the most corporatized holiday. Black Friday, the amount of advertisements, the stress of giving gifts—some even say Santa Claus has his origins in advertising Coca-Cola. They’re incorrect, but it is a thing that people think.

Nevertheless, Christmas is a very corporate holiday, and a stressful one for many, too. It’s winter in the northern hemisphere, which SUCKS (I want to make a blogpost on winter at some point somebody remind me to do that eventually), it’s expected to be spent with family, which can be either great or terrible depending on situation, and then there's that financial and planning stress that comes the expectation of gifts.

These things do suck! Thus, I don’t really blame anybody who hates Christmas—it makes sense! But personally, I get more out of something when I learn to enjoy it. So I'm gonna talk about the reasons I like it in spite of all of that, because that's way more fun :)

First, I’ll preface by saying I’m not going to talk about gift-giving and the joys of that, as while I do like gifting people things, I vastly prefer just doing that without Christmas. The stress of having to do all the gifts at one time is worse than just doing it whenever, and you lose that aura of surprise!!! But yeah, gifts are cool. The sales are cool too, I suppose, but I’m not a big capitalism fan and the other stuff is cooler. I also won’t really cover the religious aspects since I’m not religious. I don’t get too much out of that! So yeah, here’s the things about Christmas I enjoy.

I think Christmas time is very diverse for music in a way that most other times are not. “Christmas music” is a really all-encompassing label that applies to a ton of different genres. A vast majority of the time in my experience, the music you hear while out and about will have been recorded within the last ten years, and maybe some will be around the 80s/90s. Comparatively, Christmas music is given a lot more staying power, for better or for worse. A lot of these tracks can get annoying with how much they’re played, for sure, but I do think that the normalization of ‘60s music (and even ‘40s music) around Christmas is really neat. I really wish that sort of thing happened with more than Christmas!

Additionally, with that staying power (and how broad Christmas music can be), Christmas music is a pretty great way to discover artists. Last night, I got bored and decided to make a Christmas playlist, and I discovered a few artists. Particularly going to highlight Gaby Moreno—I really love her adaptations of traditional Spanish Christmas songs on Posada, and I really love the stuff I’ve heard of hers outside of that album too.

This track is so much fun. Also she made a song for Puss in Boots: The Last Wish and the theme song for Elena of Avalor? Kinda sick, if you ask me

Also, a lot of artists I like have Christmas tracks (if not albums), and through that I can trojan horse them into festivities. Win!!

This one is quite unfestive actually, but it slaps, so like...

Second, I think the decor of Christmas can be really neat. Particularly Christmas lights. Christmas lights are pretty as fuck!! I am a massive fan of walking/driving around the neighborhood and seeing all the cool lights displays that people have. I’m very easy to please—put some nice pretty nights up and I’m set. They provide just the right amount of illumination, especially indoors. Being in a room only illuminated by low-strength fairy lights may be better than world peace.

This is literally everything I would ever want. (Photo by Andrew Ciscel)

As well as the lights, Christmas trees and wreaths and whatnot really are a scheme to get more greenery into people’s homes. Which rules!! I like that! It colors more monochromatic rooms and then grounds brighter ones And then ornaments are also pretty sick. The standard orb ones are okay, but I really like ones with history or ones that reflect a person/family’s interests. There is a lot of fun to be had with that sort of thing, in my opinion!

Ugly sweaters are a really fun tradition, too. Just unabashedly overdesigned messes of clothing—really something that’s not socially acceptable any other time of year, so having that time for it is fun as hell.

Last, I just really enjoy jollyposting. The premise of just plastering Christmas theming onto random GIFs and whatnot in order to make it festive is incredibly stupid and I love it dearly. It is such a simple bit, but it’s a fun one nonetheless.

I get why people aren’t the fondest of Christmas—it’s a stressful time! There’s a lot going on, and a lot of it is insanely corporatized, which is annoying and sucks. There are a lot of things to hate about it! But personally, I’ve realized that I don’t get much out of hating it other than being more annoyed and angry, which the world already does enough of. So I think it’s good to just enjoy the good, fun bits of the holiday rather than focus on the bad. I may as well take the bits I enjoy about Christmas and have fun with them, since it’s gonna happen either way.

Employers need more variety in their Christmas playlists though good LORD 😭