Why should Christmas be cancelled?

Answer 1

I think that most people are not in favor of cancelling Christmas, and indeed, the principle of freedom of religion would suggest that people should be allowed to celebrate religious festivities, whatever they may be. However if I wanted to come up with reasons to cancel Christmas, I could. It has often been noted that Christmas has been commercialized to the point where it has lost its religious significance. Christmas is an occasion where people often spend more money than they can afford, in order to buy gifts that may not even be appreciated by their recipients. It distorts the whole functioning of retail sales in America, to have half of the year's sales take place in December. Stores are overcrowded with frantic Christmas shoppers, and great stress is placed on sales personnel. All of this seems to have remarkably little to do with any authentic celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ, which incidentally is believed to have happened in April, not in December. The whole holiday is artificial, since the date of December 25th was borrowed from the earlier pagan ceremony of the Saturnalia. The holiday of Christmas has become such an overwhelming part of American culture that it is annoying to non-Christians, who tend to feel that they are in some way being pressured into observances of a religion that is not their own. Other religions, after all, have their own holidays, but only Christian holidays become statutory holidays in America, and only Christmas has become such an obsessive event that it is virtually inescapable, even by people who are not Christian. This is not entirely fair in a society that claims to respect all religions equally. So there are some reasons to cancel Christmas.