This time of year, regardless of one's religious affiliation, it is hard if not impossible to escape Christmas. Since my arrival into adulthood, I've allowed myself to become full of humbuggery, grinchitude, assholery, what ever you want to call it. Last year, it was pretty bad. The girl i was seeing discovered the wonders of methamphetamine, and stayed up for ten days getting high while i cried. It ended with her at the top of a parking garage, with me trying to hold her from jumping with one hand while i tried to get police there on the phone with the other. I'm alone this year.

The other night i was downtown after work, and was in the square checking out the giant Doug fir that had been dragged from the forest there and was all decked out in our finery and splendor. And i looked at the faces of the children admiring it in awe, running and pointing. I looked at the young families, the couples enjoying the lights, and this time, i did not allow myself to fall into my usual mindset. Im still terribly lonely, there is an undercurrent of ennui that's always with me, but I'm forcing a smile.

It's not disingenuous, I'm not trying to wear a fake attitude, and I've found it far easier than being angry, sad, and whatnot. It takes less muscles to smile and far less energy as well to keep it up. If i allow my face to reflect my dissatisfaction, people who regard me seem to assume it reflects my attitude toward them and send bad energy back my way. Whereas its exactly opposite if i when wear a faint smile.

I've decided to make this season easier on myself. It would be simple to allow myself to perseverate on the losses incurred over the year and fall into a dark and lonely depression. But not easier. I still honestly don't look to forward to the actual day, i would love to spend that time with other human beings , but life is pretty solitary right now. Maybe next year. But i will use the time to cone to better grips with my lonliness and perhaps by wearing a smile, may attract the favor of someone who will be there next year.

How do you feel /get through/celebrate? What is xmas to you?

To me it's pretty much nothing. I mostly ignore it.


Last year I ate some 2C-E and the whole X-mas celebration was quite psychedelic. This year I'm just meditating, cleaning the house and visit my senior relatives in the retirement home. Maybe some illegal fireworks fun to ward off the evil spirits.


Become friends with antichrists, atheists, muslims, jews or buddhists. You're not alone. Btw the easy way is not always the rewarding one, invest something in your company.

And listen to some good X-mas tunes:

I understand how you guys feel. I sometimes feel the same way. But not this year. I have a glass of egg nog on the go as i write this post. Here is a little ditty to warm the cockles of your hearts....

Good strategy, embrace the enemy.

Haha, right on UFO, thanks for the tunes, I'm all warm and tingly. Or just pissed myself, whatever.

And yeah hug, that's kinda where my meandering point was supposed to go. That since i stopped running out at dawn to open my stocking then wait a whole ten minutes before i woke up the rest of the house so i could Ip open presents, I've hated xmas. And again, I'm not decking anything ( unless that guy in the corner doesn't stop looking at me like that- i hate mustaches! - KIDDING! ), still, I'm taking in some holiday cheer.

((Oh and the Mathis is one i think that has a cover version i like, if i can find it, I'll post.))

I just wish it didn't take me several decades to realize it's easier to smile. Thanks for the input, making the smile wider.

Damn, Dimmu Xmas. Now that's novel.

I think the gift-buying while some people go hungry is disgusting. I take Christmas as a special time to focus on charity. I give extra and for gifts, I request charitable contributions.

Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa should be a time that people to use to celebrate what they claim is most important, which are generally family and friends. However, at least in the US, businesses have spun it so that it is all about the shopping from Thanksgiving eve to Christmas morn'.

The sick part is that my job requires me to work like an animal during this part of the year to satisfy consumers. So I experience their depravity first-hand. They are relentless with the buying.

Overall I wish the reason for the season was really love and caring about each other like Lifetime movies claim, but unfortunately this rarely seems to be the case. The holidays have potential, but it is so often squandered. It's really too bad.

Then grasp the nettle and introduce the changes that need to be done. I will be spending the holiday season getting ratarsed while eating a castrated male chicken that was ordered from the butchers.

DMTheory, null24 and Ufostrahlen if you feel the need to comment on Xmas then my heart goes out to you, and i hope that you all have a good one. Fucking Xmas!!!! Isn"t it great? Arn"t we just completely lucky to be alive and exist in this weird plane of existence that some folk refer to as life???????

As a wee lad, I used to love Christmas, decorating the house and setting up the tree, going to all the big stores and helping my parents pick out junk for everyone, getting together with family and friends, and of course ripping into my loads and loads of loot on Christmas morning.

As I got older and wiser (or maybe just more jaded) I grew to despise the consumerism involved, the way love is doled out in dollar signs, and the phoniness of the whole fiasco. I'd get very depressed about the whole thing and just do my damndest to ignore it all.

Then a few years back I discovered a connection. The real secret behind the tradition. I know you fine folque will be able to appreciate this bit...

I always wondered what the deal was with bringing the pine tree in the house and the whole santa and flying reindeer thing. I knew it all kinda dated back to some old European saint and was supposed to be about the star baby somehow and so on, but it was all very vague and cryptic.

Then in my ongoing pursuit of devouring entheogenic knowledge I came across a story that seemed all too familiar. Shamans living in the cold north, where the snow piles so high that they have to enter their huts through the roof. Who dress in warm suits of red and white to look like their sacramental magic mushroom. A rather robust red and white mushroom that just so happens to grow in a symbiotic relationship with pine trees and needs to be dried out with heat to convert one of the acids present into the active alkaloid. A mushroom highly coveted by the local reindeer. Starting to sound familiar?

Now I feel as though I'm in on some kind of incredibly grand inside joke and it fills my heart with delight every time I see these families decorating the pine tree and hanging their stockings by the chimney with care. Keeping alive an ages-old tradition without the slightest inkling of why they do it and what it's really all about.

After I made this discovery and really let it sink in over a couple of seasons, I've grown quite fond of the holiday season; and while I'm still one who prefers to celebrate a solstice ceremony, and am rather put off by the frenzied consumerism, I have a new-found appreciation for these venerable holy day traditions.

The old Catholic "let's appropriate the pagan festival and make it meaningless"gag. Those Christians! (Looks at camera and shrugs.)

One big consumerist scam. Why only give for one month when you can give for the whole year? It's sad that isn't promoted.. instead we get the illusion of being good to one another and compete to buy stuff we don't need from places that are essentially sucked dry of life.

When one child receives plastic toy, don't yah know another dies of starvation? <-- Switched up Marley quote.

Jus my 2 cents.

When you work in retail during Christmas, it's very easy to get jaded with the holiday. Customers are animals.

But there is a ton to be said for modifying your interpretation to be happier.

To me, christmas is just another day, a societal tradition of sorts that has been slowly molded into this consumerist/pseudo holiday that I feel has no real intrinsic meaning; as it's the same as any other day.

Although, due to my parents being much older than me, and seeing that they enjoy the day in terms of getting together, cooking a feast, and giving a few gifts. I take part for their sake. I know some might look at what im doing as 'pretending', but seeing their faces and how happy it makes them - it makes me tremendously happy, regardless of how I feel about christmas itself.

This holiday doesn't really bring forth anything special in terms of the above, as we're very close as it is, and this holiday is just like any other day for me and the family.

This year will be the first holiday season where im alone for the most part, aside from the parents coming over for a couple hours. I will be sitting alone; me, myself and I. My gf of 4+ years won't be here this year, so that'll be interesting, and the one true friend that I do have will be visiting family down south. Am I bummed? ...nah.

Time alone can be a gift, especially during this time of winter slumber.

I hear you and i understand how this sort of employment could be detrimental to your mental well being at this time of year. I was actually drunk when i wrote my previous posts and now i am back to not liking xmas very much. The next day, after writing my posts, i realised that i had been self medicating with the eggnog in order to deal with the Xmas period and, for a time, it worked.

If you are jaded i will list a couple of pointers in order for you to get through the festive season while at work.

1. Take a hip flask of your favourite tipple into work (preferably some kind of industrial strength spirit) and hit it as often as possible. It is very important for you to state your intent to yourself before imbibing. I recommend repeating a mantra along the lines of "we are all one and, although we are contributing to the spiritually empty consumerthon that will inevitably lead to the downfal of the human race, we actually have the best interests of our loved ones close to our hearts".
If your initial intent is soiled by such thoughts as "these people are animals" then, once the contents of your hipflask take hold, it is possible that you will start abusing one of your punters and a fight may ensue. I cannot guarantee any positive outcome with this method. It"s always a roll of the dice when we take mind altering substances

2. Download the track i have linked below and play it on repeat on the PA system at the retail outlet that you work at.

vous etes des animaux



I think that those kind of sentiments are pure and are what Xmas is all about.

Hug,are you suggesting that someone consume alcohol at their workplace, during work!?!

Good for you, i second that emotion! Personally, I'd suggest some odorless cannabis extracts in a vape pen, but hey Xmas is all about tradition, am i wrong?

Love ya man.

I don't live within 3,000 miles of my family, and I hate the commercial tradition of christmas. So I usually take it as an opportunity to get extra shifts where I work since everyone else is trying to get time off.

The place I work is closed on XMas day though, so I think that little brother and I are going to do an extraction

Just another day, as a holiday it's useless, fake, and downright pathetic. It's just one more way to push materialism on an eyeless world. I love mentioning Saturnalia to people who just blindly go along with what theyre told, and those who actually get curious enough to see the real roots of christmas come back to me with this look on their face that they realized their whole life has been a lie hahaha.

ufostrahlen, awesome post of the Gateways video

It's an excuse to take time off from work, go home, and spend some quality time with my family.

For me, it doesn't need to be any more then that. I'm not into the whole consumerism thing any more than I'm into the Jesus thing, but with work and life, it's hard enough to find time to spend with my family, that I'll take what I can get.

It's also about being connected to something a little bit bigger than just you. We have traditions that go back at least two hundred years, that my great-great-grandparents brought over from Norway, and knowing that I'm helping keep that chain alive is kind of nice. Obviously if you have no family traditions, you're sort of out of luck, but I object to the 'Christmas is a meaningless scam' stuff. Maybe it is for you, but that doesn't mean it is for everyone.

As for the gifts, if I have to shop, I try and make sure that the things I buy are useful, like books, or skill toys. Something that will impart knowledge, as opposed to just being tossed aside.

Blessings
~ND

I love this thread, and I love the Nexus for harboring such conversations.

Christmas. The start of a new solar year. It signifies an increase in light, after the 3 darkest days of the year. The rise of the sun/son.

I had the most wonderful vision during an oral salvia experience this solstice. Just such clarity...time travel back to childhood wonder-literally. It's a gift and a blessing.

That's the only frame of reference I care to map over what yule means to me this year. It's enough..

Well being a gardener..I finished work last friday, so I have about 6 weeks off now for the down season with some pay..so I get to relax and enjoy the dreaming place of winter for a bit. So that's good.