There are many reasons to not like Christmas but mine is the most pedantic. Sure overconsumption, yes, the imposition of fraught familial relationships, even the forced jollity and grimly gaudy fashion all feel like more legitimate reasons for midwinter nausea than the dissonant feeling I get from the fact that it’s so obviously on the wrong date.
There are three significant points that all fall at the the end of the Gregorian calendar. The full stop of New Year’s Eve, six days after Christmas, which itself is a few days behind the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year. Only one of these is real. The solstice happens like sunrise, a phenomena of how the planet moves through space. It happens without us, whilst Christmas and New Year are ideas we have imposed on time. With no desire to offend any Christian readers, Christmas is a fraud.
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