Certainly repetition alone is not enough to lend meaning to celebration, but I believe it's important. That's why I like the special day part, as opposed to random times . . . it makes it special. It gives people a focal point for their spiritual and earthly love and joy. I think that if we gave random presents all the time, it would make present-giving less meaningful, less significant, more every-day. For one thing, present-giving on Christmas is something people do together.
See above reply re: grandmother. When you have to give people things, you don't necessarily end up giving them things they actually/want need (or you spend lots of time and worry trying to find them things they do want). My experience with my grandmother -- plus the fact that I so rarely know what to get people -- means that institutionalized gift-giving bothers me a lot. While random gift-giving all the time would admittedly feel more plebian, I get far more joy from someone saying, "I saw this and thought of you" at some random time than getting a pile of stuff at Christmas. And in the interest of actually getting stuff we want, my family all does specific wishlists -- which are great because it means you're guaranteed to actually get stuff you want/need, but to me there's far more magic in "I remember you were really lusting after this scarf but you couldn't afford it, and you've been having a bad week and I can afford it so I bought it for you" than in "Hey, it's your birthday/Christmas, here are x number of items from your wishlist." The fandom wishlists/secret santas have a lot of that spontaneous magic for me because you only have some idea of what you're going to get (though of course there is the risk factor that you'll get shite).
As for the "something people do together"? As we well know, I adore my parents and get along with my family, but you are so much more family-oriented than I am. The togetherness of events like that is usually a neutral and occasionally negative aspect from my point of view.
Yeah, when you said "ceremony" my brain immediately jumped to Catholicism, but since that covers a lot of ground and I wasn't actually griping about Christmas church services (I do tend to actually find Midnight Mass beautiful and powerful) I wanted to clarify.
The fact that so many people participate in traditional things, be they hymn-singing or what you have for Christmas dinner, without thinking about them in an intentional fashion bothers me no end in all sorts of contexts. I feel like I used "ceremony" in reference to Catholicism more for the High Church aspects in particular as I prefer words to symbols (I thought I talked about this somewhere else in the replies to this thread, but I can't find it, so I must be conflating it with another thread). I do see how traditional things can be meaningful with their connection to history and all that entails, plus of course their actual susbtance.
Re: the defense, er, doesn't rest
See above reply re: grandmother. When you have to give people things, you don't necessarily end up giving them things they actually/want need (or you spend lots of time and worry trying to find them things they do want). My experience with my grandmother -- plus the fact that I so rarely know what to get people -- means that institutionalized gift-giving bothers me a lot. While random gift-giving all the time would admittedly feel more plebian, I get far more joy from someone saying, "I saw this and thought of you" at some random time than getting a pile of stuff at Christmas. And in the interest of actually getting stuff we want, my family all does specific wishlists -- which are great because it means you're guaranteed to actually get stuff you want/need, but to me there's far more magic in "I remember you were really lusting after this scarf but you couldn't afford it, and you've been having a bad week and I can afford it so I bought it for you" than in "Hey, it's your birthday/Christmas, here are x number of items from your wishlist." The fandom wishlists/secret santas have a lot of that spontaneous magic for me because you only have some idea of what you're going to get (though of course there is the risk factor that you'll get shite).
As for the "something people do together"? As we well know, I adore my parents and get along with my family, but you are so much more family-oriented than I am. The togetherness of events like that is usually a neutral and occasionally negative aspect from my point of view.
Yeah, when you said "ceremony" my brain immediately jumped to Catholicism, but since that covers a lot of ground and I wasn't actually griping about Christmas church services (I do tend to actually find Midnight Mass beautiful and powerful) I wanted to clarify.
The fact that so many people participate in traditional things, be they hymn-singing or what you have for Christmas dinner, without thinking about them in an intentional fashion bothers me no end in all sorts of contexts. I feel like I used "ceremony" in reference to Catholicism more for the High Church aspects in particular as I prefer words to symbols (I thought I talked about this somewhere else in the replies to this thread, but I can't find it, so I must be conflating it with another thread). I do see how traditional things can be meaningful with their connection to history and all that entails, plus of course their actual susbtance.