Well, I guess it's a mixed blessing. I love the music and traditions and many other things about this season, but I have an easier time with Easter and Passover. I suppose the bad things about Christmas are the unfulfilled expectations (things never seem to happen exactly the way we hope they will), the amplified loneliness of people who have nobody to celebrate the holidays with, the tacky commercialism, and the conflict between religions and secularism that seems to get amplified during this season.
I guess it's that last thing that bugs me most, as a Christian. It's a religious feast, dammit, and it's a crying shame when people try to cleanse it of its religious nature. It's not just a Christian feast, either - it's a coming together of holy days that are sacred to many different religious and ethnic traditions. This is a sacred, holy time, and if we are a world that believes in religious tolerance, we should study and repect all the many ways that people hold this time sacred. What's more, I think we should share all of those religious and ethnic traditions with each other and sing each other's songs loud and clear, and then maybe this would become the time of peace and good will and generosity that it's meant to be.
This season can be a time that makes wonderful memories - not of the things that we plan on, but of the spontaneous things that happen at gatherings of people who love each other.
-Joe Offer-