Someone asked me earlier tonight whether I was feeling festive… my response sums up exactly how I feel about this time of the year:

Festive… me?  No, that’s the last thing anyone would accuse me of being in December.
I’m averse the spirit of christmas as it is these days - an excuse to push capitalism in everyone’s faces, a social requirement to buy things you can’t afford for people you barely see the rest of the year and probably don’t like.  It’s sadly just another way to force people to take loans that they can’t repay, and push people to commit to responsibilities that, at any other time of year they couldn’t fulfil; I find it a sad social commentary that such importance is placed on making that single day of the year meaningful, when in fact the demand for it to occur in a pre-defined way on a pre-defined date merely serves to make it completely insignificant.

Wouldn’t you much rather have someone give you a present at a completely random time of the year, for reasons other than social expectation, where it’s obvious that more thought than “How much money will this leave me to spend on the countless other people I have on my list?” has gone into it?

That’s not to say I completely reject it; I buy cards for people who I consider close, and I visit my family, but I’m happier once the event has passed and people return to normality.