The english topic !

Thanks, Merry Chrismas to you too. ^^

Thank you Keagan !
What did you organize for Christmas ? What kind of presents will you offer ?

I don't organize anything, I don't celebrate chrismas. ^^ Only my niece will have a present because she believes in chrismas, but she's the only one in my little family. I'll do a DIY present for her, but I'm not sure what.

Ok Keagan, you don't celebrate anything but you are not sad ? For me, I have some family problem but I have celebrated. But I don't celebrate New Year, little sad.

I don't see the point, just because I don't celebrate christmas doesn't mean I'm sad. Furthermore I celebrate my birthday, Halloween and the new year, because they are a celabration of a passage, it's a kind of ritual to me.
However, the fact of not celebrating anything doesn't mean sadness. For me, celebrations are not a synonym of happiness since a very long time, I don't need them and they usually makes me more sad than anything else.
Moreover I have no particular reason to celebrate religious celebrations, except for Halloween, because I don't celebrate that like a religious celebration. And like I said few time ago in a chrismas topic (in the free flood section), for me chrismas is the most hypocrite celebration I know, I don't want to be a part of it.
And I'm happy anyway, because many other things in the world makes me happy, and even without chrismas I can show my love and give presents to the people I love at any moment in the year, that doesn't matter. I love them everytime, not just once.
And "the fairy of chrismas" thing that people usually told me when I say I don't love chrismas, I never felt that, I don't miss it.
Really, I'm happy without all this stuff.

Well, even if i'm a truly Xmas lover, i can understand you're point of view : after all Xmas is just a religious celebrating day turned into a capitalism celebration of mass consumption (in an extrem point of view).

But for me, Xmas is also the moment I can see my family, which is a little scattered these days. Before Xmas, i haven't saw my two brothers since my older brother's birthday. And every Xmas i can see my grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins i never see the rest of the time.

I think that more than religion and consumption, Xmas has become a celebration of the family, and of the links between humans. That's a little bit Xmas bad movies' cliché , but I really believe in it



And I'm also a terrible self centered child. So i love receiving presents

I understand your point of view Keagan, even if I think and I feel this "magic of Christmas" : don't need to have party, juste the faery : illuminations, decorations in the streets and all the nice legends, the gifts in the store. I don't see that like a consumption way, even if I know that a lot of people depend of that.

As I'm concerned, I think I would be a little sad. Actually, I don't think that my family (the rest of my family...) is eternal and I know that there will be more and more problems now. But I hope to have a good Christmas time all the time, every year, I hope that. I think I couldn't care to be alone the evening of Christmas, after the beautiful days I've known when I was young with family.

I dream again. I just profit the good times.
Nevertheless, for me, New Year is less important : it is , of course, but less than Christmas. And we will be just three the 31 evening, it's sad, just Mum, GrandMa and me. The others left, my family is not like before anymore. And as we are always together, it's not a surprise to see us, it's like everyday.
We have decided to make a good meal and pu decorations to have a good moment between us. We have the right to be happy even if it's not like the precedent years, even if it's at home and we are just three persons.

I don't say 'consumption' about chrismas 'cause for me consumption is almost the same all the year, you know. That's not the most important part of my argumentation. I make presents, I people give me presents sometimes, and that's cool. Ok, we buy usually a lot more things at chrismas, but I think it goes less and less because most people goes more toward the DIY, the home made, etc... nowadays.
About presents, it's kind of fun, because when I look backward in the past I see I had happy chrismas carols when I was a little girl, but all my interest was for the presents and the food, I was too young to "analyse" chrismas as we do now.
And growing old, I never had a good vision of chrismas, it has never changed. When I finally reached the age to analyse what I thought of chrismas, I looked around me and I understood chrismas wasn't what I needed and a truly good thing.

I understand what you say about the fact people we love aren't eternal, but I just rect differently to this. You prefer celebrate that day, I respect that, I know it means a lot for many people like you.
But me, I just prefer show my love, my gratefulness, and make the most of my dears all the time with the same intensity.
I don't say that is not the case of the people who celebrate chrismas even if mostly it's the feeling I have. Like I said, for me it's a hypocrite celebration, but I also know that it's not that for everyone.
Just, I don't need that particular day to be entirely with people I love, and I surely don't understand why other people need it, even if I undestand the fact they need it.

For me, basicly, chrismas is just a day like other. There is nothing more, nothing less that day.
In fact, chrismas represent what new year represent for you.
And the fact your family is small at new year is the same to me all the time, I just have my mother, my brother, my niece - my sister is always somewhere else, I have two uncles who lives at Paris and at La Réunion (therefore two aunts and three cousins), I don't feel so close to them even if I love them; and for all my father's family, they don't like me and I hate them, they're not my family, they're never was.
So we are just the four of us all year, and I love them everyday.

For me the new year is (like my birthday) the day I can say: I survided another one. It's a passage between the past and the future, between the old me and the new me.
It's a sort of natural celebration. Like birthday, or Halloween (I must say Samhuin, in fact - it celebrate the passage between the clear season to the dark one; and more personaly, it celebrate what I was and what I became, Halloween is the occasion to exume the myself which is dead just to remind me what I was and and from where I come).
These three day are the celebration of changes.
I don't celebrate the new year to be "happy together", I can celebrate it alone, that doesn't matter. This year I am with my little family, last year I was with friends, the year before I was all alone... That doesn't bother me.

You have very good argues, You almost achieve to convince me about Christmas. I understand very well when you say that New Year is a passage and something you about you too. I like the New year to rebegin, to can say to yourself : ok, I can take a new way now, I can have new resolutions, it's a new year, I can improve myself and do everything to profit good times.
Like birthday, it's a new year. Nevertheless, if we think more about it, Birthday is a simple day, a simple date too ! Is it so important ? Why this date, this day, you don't feel different the day of your birthday... We just celebrate because human have organized a party for each date of birthday but it doesn't represent something. We can grow and improve ourself other days...

I think we have some national day, some parties, some traditions but many of them are not necessary, it's just to spend good time, to have better days of happiness in our life.
So Christmas, it's a familial reunion : it's an official date reputated to get magic and happiness. This day, you forget the bad things and your bad feeling for a person in your family. This day, you say : ok, and you just profit to your family.
Yes, we can see our family everyday but usually many persons don't take the time and it's very difficult to have a common day to see all your family. Christmas is the party : all the families see them. And the country seems to bring happiness. Illuminations, decorations, there is something beautiful when you walk in the streets and you listen Christmas songs, when you watch Christmas movies in your TV or in cinema. Christmas markets are beautiful too.

That's why I understand very well your point of view about Christmas, you're right but I can't say that Christmas is less important than my birthday or New Year. It's an other thing, different, but it's Christmas.

The birthday represents the day you are born, and how amazing you are, it makes sense to celebrate it. Therefore, people offers you presents, in fact they celebrate you, they do offerings to you. That make you the most important person in the world that particular day.

More seriously, it's something like that, since the day you were born, you survived. Birthday means to me "I survived another year since I was born". To me, it celebrate life, my life.

Citation :

I think we have some national day, some parties, some traditions but many of them are not necessary, it's just to spend good time, to have better days of happiness in our life.

I agree, man of them are unnecessary, like you said, and yes, some people decide to celebrate that for plenty reasons, some others don't, but many people keeps celabrating these just because they "have" to celebrate it. I think it's a little bit sad and stupid.
Me, I just celebrate these ones that I tell, and also the music feast, not all years, but sometimes, because I find cool to celebrate music, and yeah, it's an occasion like others after all.
For St Partick, I don't really celebrate it but I like the fact of wearing green and drink beer, that's less a feast to me than an ritual, an habit; I don't really know why, I have no particular reasons for that one. ^^

For chrismas I don't need all that stuff to see my family... And I really hate the chrismas's songs except just two of them. x) (a song in the movie - I don't know the original title, so I'll say it in french - Carrol's bells in "Maman j'ai raté l'avion", and the other one is "Holly Night" because I like the rythm, not the lyrics).
I also hate chrismas movies (except maman j'ai raté l'avion et Nightmare before chrismas, that's all! x) )
I think markets aren't "beautiful", they just... are.

And the decorations in the streets are the only thing I like, because I love beautiful things, and mainly the lights (for everything, I thing most of the prettiest things in the world are made of lights, it's my point of view about beauty. Nothing could be seen without light. Every stuff I found beautiful imply light.) Lights are beautiful, no matter the day, therefore, chrismas lights are beautiful.
But, sadly, in my town decorations are more ugly than beautiful, and they are all year since ten years the same.