No Feeling

Yesterday was Christmas. Outside of the shitload of work it meant on nights when I had to go to work I didn't care about it at all. It doesn't feel like a holiday inside of me. It's like a regular day. It was pretty dull, and I slept through most of the daylight hours. So, is the problem limited to a lack of care about the holiday or its meaning? Or is it more widespread than that?

Certainly there are people and days of the year we don't give a crap about, whether it be Columbus Day or the poor guy you saw get pummeled while a crowd of a people merely watched cheering the violence on or the people who fuck up their own lives by smoking, drinking and driving, or those who have nothing -- we may pretend to have some sympathy but we do nothing about it, we as a people have more reverence for greed than in sharing and helping. To us it's beat or be beaten, not work together (maybe that's why mankind may inevitably be doomed). We may go "thank god I'm not in that position/I hope I'm never in that position", but that's about it.

...

Hm... I just lost myself there thanks to that tangent. Heh.

A holiday needs something to make it meaningful, that's a given. Usually the warmth of family or the presence of someone special. But without that, what good is the holiday? There's nothing special about it. Christmas, it's apparently not even an established fact that Jesus was born on this day, and we sure as hell don't follow his teachings of love and peace (though isn't god supposedly about that to, yet he smites and what not (or supposedly used to) when he doesn't like what us humans did?). I'm not spiritual at all, another drawback to the holiday.

The only thing that makes it noticeable that it's a holiday is the corporate advertising and such making sure that it's the busiest time of the year so they get their big earnings.

This lack of a meaning can't be just my going against tradition out of recognition that that's the only thing that makes it "sacred" -- or you can trade calling "traditions" as such and instead call them ritualistic observance which isn't any different. This desenstization from holidays can't completely be all a machination of being a little more indepent of thought and beliefs than others. It has to be the long standing absense of anything "special" attributed to it. No one really important to spend it with, and nothing but erased memories vaguely discernible of the times when there was a whole family living under this roof having "better" Christmases... I imagine that "past erasing" has caused a lot of the meaning to evaporate. So the holidays (Valentines Day, 4th of July, Thanksgiving, etc) won't really have any "positive" meaning or any kind of "special" meaning like days like say May 9th have (even though it's a negative meaning) until something makes it special or worth trying to make a special day.