After I parted ways with faith as a kid, the holidays have always seemed very… ‘adults who still believe in the tooth fairy’ sort of thing. I haven’t actually celebrated since I was very young, and tbh it’s either a faith-based thing (which I don’t believe in, obviously) or it’s a cash-grab for corporations to unload back stock while acting like they are actually ‘so excited for the holidays’.
While I didn’t see a decline or hesitation around my neighborhood generally the last few years, my folks have been less and less giddy as time goes on. A couple years ago they bought their tree on the 24th. It’s like the excitement has weaned and they are just doing it because ‘we have always done it’, which again imo is stupid because you are stressing yourself out (and physically hurting yourself) by decorating the house, buying a tree, etc for something that they are only doing because they feel obligated. I’d happily take an extra $100 as a gift and free up an afternoon by not having to buy, haul home, decorate, and 10 days later dispose of, a tree. Same with house decorations, the neighbors aren’t going to care if we don’t spend 2 days cursing under our breath, stapling our fingers and almost falling off the room.
I dunno, it’s just so foreign to me. Any other time if a fat man burglarized your house, ate your snacks and left mediocre gifts as compensation that you’d return the very next morning anyway, you’d be pissed. But apparently it’s totally normal because it’s cold outside now.
Ok, so the resource allocation of the moon/earth society is completely broken and the moon-dwelling oligarchs sucked. Agreed.
But the end of the movie makes the computer system unable to differentiate between the handful of moon lords vs the unwashed masses on the earth’s surface. There are not enough resources to go around in Elysium. All that medicine and food from the moon bastards is gonna run out in about ten minutes and then the last bits of society will finish collapsing. Any hope of ever rebuilding a functioning society ends about a week after the end of that movie.
So it’s felt like this to me basically since I became an adult. For one, I work in an industry where the holidays mean nothing. And two, now I have adult shit to do, so there isn’t a ton of time to just sit around baking and watching Christmas specials and what not. Also can’t really stand the consumerist side of things and while I do like giving gifts as a thing, I don’t like the idea of “just buy some shit” or “whoever gets the most presents wins.”
Now all that said, when I think back to what used to make the holidays special for me, I realized that was adults deliberately making the holidays special. And the shitty thing about being an adult (unless your SO is like, from the Clause family) is that you kind of have to do that for yourself, and you’re probably going to have to do boring adult shit to make that happen. Like, you might literally be putting something like “Bake cookies/Watch ‘The Grinch’” into your calendar. There is a lot of little things you can do as well - play some music, get some scented candles, stick a bowl of decorative pinecones out, etc.
I think this also helps a lot with other people, or in my case, my kids. I don’t have a ton of friends (I’m very much a person with a small circle, but all people i know I can call if i need help moving if that makes sense) but we do some small get togethers. With my kids, I try to do more of the things that make things feel special for them. Lights on the house I could take or leave (back to being lazy) but I do my best and I put them up, even though it was just a few days ago because that was the first day that wasn’t pouring where I was at home when it was light out. I make it a point to watch some Christmas movies (and let the kids come to a consensus on which) and bake some cookies or whatever. We usually go every year to that neighborhood where every house has cool lights, even if that is an hour drive away. Lots of little things like that.
Anyway, I feel like the holidays are very much a “fake it til you make it” scenario. I tend to think about it like “what do I remember that I liked about holidays” when I was a kid, and then force myself to do those things. What I’ve generally found is that there are definitely times I’ve regretted not doing anything like that, but I never regret when I forced myself to do something like this, and I rarely remember the “forced” part.
I realized that was adults deliberately making the holidays special. And the shitty thing about being an adult (unless your SO is like, from the Clause family) is that you kind of have to do that for yourself, and you’re probably going to have to do boring adult shit to make that happen. Like, you might literally be putting something like “Bake cookies/Watch ‘The Grinch’” into your calendar. There is a lot of little things you can do as well - play some music, get some scented candles, stick a bowl of decorative pinecones out, etc.
This is the most real advice I’ve seen on Lemmy. It really fucking sucked realizing that no one was going to make things special for me (mostly because I hated the realization that I was expecting someone/something else to make my life more fun). Celebrating holidays and doing seasonal things that are special for the time of year REALLY help break up the monotony of the grind of everyday life (work, kids, bills, house work, ad nauseum). It would be nice to have someone else create that magic for me, but… that doesn’t really happen as an adult. You have to make things fun for yourself, and for others if you can.
Not counting climbing a mountain with ice (and no snow falling), my actual first snowfall was in the 2021 snowpocalypse in Texas of all places. So it wasn’t actually a great time. We were fortunate enough not to lose power and water though, so other people definitely had it way worse than us.
Not I. My faintest memories are from 5 and by then it was typical of the season. likely my first reaciton would have been as a baby or toddler and way before I can recall.
I hated Christmas when I worked in retail, and for several years after. I’ve only gotten back into it the past few years, and now my husband has gotten sentimental and wants to put up meaningful ornaments instead of just nice looking ones.
My family didn’t have a tradition of gifting ornaments every year so I’ve been building up a collection of personal ornaments the past few years to catch up with him, which is a cute and fun thing to do as a couple.
I’m sorry I don’t know how to help. Personally nothing beats the cosy feeling of hot chocolate in front of a fire, cuddling watching TV, basking in the glow of a lit tree. It feels like Christmas to me and I love it.
Smarter Every Day. Used to be just some amateur prettyboy nerd just geeking out and getting behind the scenes on cool stuff. Then it seems like he run out of cool ideas and money got involved. Last episode I watched, he was hocking some obviously awful aquarium game that he was involved with.
He does have great content and some great videos still that I enjoy, but it’s also clear he thinks he can understand and make a video about stuff he absolutely doesn’t understand.
The fall for me was when he fronted some random encrypted file sharing startup with very misleading marketing.
I think he’s a good host for engaging and entertaining conversations, if you don’t take him seriously. The problem is he became hugely politically consequential, and he can’t decide if he’s just an everyday moron (ha ha) or a powerful voice with meaningful opinions.
Here are a few that I find have consistent high quality content:
The B1M… His videos seem to really get into the nitty gritty logistics of various large construction projects.
Caitlin Doughty (Ask a Mortician)… I feel like each video is better than the previous. The historical death documentaries are incredible.
Climate Town… Videos about climate change & has a really fun sense of humor.
Neo… Lots of really cool explanatory videos. The editing is really good as well! The recent video on the presidential motorcade was very cool.
And one more… Reckless Ben… IDK if it really fits within the prompt of this thread… The channel is tough to watch with all the annoying humor & there is a lot of hit-or-miss videos, but at least lately, it seems to really be doing some very interesting things. I enjoyed his series on mckamey manor.
im not that into it. Im sorta a nod and smile and enjoy how other folks are into it. I do like leaving little gifts for my condo neighbors but its gotten skimpier and skimpier as prices have been higher to where now they just get a tin of butter cookies. I would love to get back to where I was changing things up with chocolate or inexpensive wine. sigh.
Harry Mack. Greatest off-top freestyler ever (except maybe Juice WRLD, but that’s apples and oranges). Folks are sad about the end of Omegle Bars, but I’ve always thought Wordplay Wednesdays is his best format.
Mr. Beat Ex history teacher and amazingly awkward dude, quite good at explaining US political stuff.
Second Wind Yahtzee Croshaw (ZP) and Cold Take, as well as a bunch of other ex escapist people and it rules.
The Vile Eye The series “analysing evil” is a pretty good dive into fictions baddies
The Stupendium Performs and writes songs based on pop culture, and is great at what he does
munecat cute British girl pours Beer really badly funny music lady debunks/discusses political shit
knowing better long form history content from an ex history teacher. Most recently had been doing the insane religious movements behind Kellogg’s and whatnot
b2 studios videos about AI being trained in Unreal Engine, like teaching an ai to bowl or play ping pong. Also funny AF
your movie sucks movie reviews. Dude knows his shit and is pretty funny
Oh god why is my subs list so long and there are still so many to list and I’m too tired and high after work rn maybe I’ll edit this later
I tried to go with people on my sub list that hadn’t been mentioned yet as well as the smaller ones to help boost em
Might just add a screenshot list to the post but it’d be long (and also have people on there I know I’ll get judged for cuz I’ve forgotten they’re even there by now lol)
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