unironically this a little bit though

(EDIT: im rewriting this post to be funnier. if u see this post with this message, please pretend it has more jokes)

edit 2: in lieu of a joke i have instead simply downvoted my comment. i will upvote it when it is funny

edit 3: i am adding jokes in bold. please laugh

i think u will probably like christmas if it's the only time you get off to spend with a family. but if you're observing it from the outside, like a snowglobe, it's pretty thoroughly awful

christmas is all wrapped up in the capitalist american fantasy dream. it's the destiny that was manifested. it's the beautiful loving white grandpa all americans strive to become. and by god, the best way to prove you love your children more than other parents is to bring financial ruin upon your family.

don't forget the lies. the most important thing is to lie to children. (edit: ignore the rest of this paragraph, lying to children is funny as it is.) everyone must maintain the lie. santa claus is real. if you disagree and a child hears you, it is acceptable to make threats against your life. that's christmas baby

the best thing about christmas is it's capitalism denouncing itself. christmas giftgiving is theoretically and empirically an economic inefficiency. there is an argument to be made that gift-giving can provide value in a paternalistic or knowledge-transfer sense (e.g. if you're a tech nerd, a six hours of work and a few $80 retropies can provide $100s of value for ur loved ones). but that doesn't balance out the deadweight loss. (edit: it would be funnier if u just gave people gift cards to shops that are not around in the area)

it's the largest trickle-up-economics machine imaginable. the yearly US christmas spending is about $250B. that's about 1/4 of the yearly US military budget.

can you imagine what we could do with a fraction of that money (edit: i bet u can think of something funny to do with the money. todo, come back and do this.)

for me personally, christmas was the eerie eye of the storm of a familial-abuse torment-nexus. i'm free from that now, but the atmosphere is still so cloying and overwhelming. christmas is inescapable, and if you want to escape, people will think less of you. and i'm speaking as a white american with practically no assimilation pressure! (edit: this one isn't a joke. i've heard some harrowing things about people unfamiliar with the us holiday canon, almost all of which about christmas, and one about halloween.)

don't forget our troops. they're overseas so that you can eat santa cake. the same "ugh, people who hate christmas are annoying" is the same sentiment wielded against people who decry the salvation army, or the US army.

but the main thing is what christmas does to people. i think there's something to be said about the stress does to people, the stress of the darkest, most financially-stressful, work-crunchiest, parents-in-law-iest times of the year. (edit: i saw a child break down when it could not sit in santas lap and then i saw the parents break down too. it is unclear if this is funny or not.)

i spent christmas with my in-laws last year and i'm happy to say it didn't make me aggressive. but my in-laws are christian Christian. like, unironically-believe-God-is-real white christians. (edit: this, too, is already funny. please laugh) i stopped tracking calories because i didn't even clear 1000 in a day, and i spent too much time asleep to worry. they wouldn't even let me put my erotic rudolph art on the trees (edit: the rudolph art part is a joke. they couldn't stop me if they tried)

christmas turns people into their worst selves

so unironically this but only a little bit though. it's not really more fascist than the rest of the united states