Coming into November the holidays are about to start for a lot of people & with that come are lots of perspectives & views on it & also the jack-up of speed over the next couple of months because of so much happening & because people are enjoying themselves so much time goes by quickly. People like to debate and spew their opinion on certain topics, the holidays are no different. People have their beliefs on what they celebrate & the reasoning behind why they do it is different from every individual. When it comes to the holidays they have changed considerably over time & everyone does it differently and not being hypocritical when we see someone does things differently.
The Change-Up
When we take a look at holidays they have very specific reasons for being celebrated but they change over time like anything else. When we look at Hanukkah it’s the celebration of the Maccabees winning their war against the Greeks & the rededication of temple some say it’s celebrated because the oil lasted 8 days instead of one, but overall it’s is a rededication for Jews, that has stayed the same over time, other holidays have changed completely because of the population or just context, an example of this is Mardi Gras which is French for Fat Tuesday, which is supposed to be a big celebration before Ash Wednesday where it’s supposed to be a time where you eat rich before going lean after Ash Wednesday, Lent where you’re supposed to give up something like Jesus when he went into the wilderness & culminates in Easter which is a holiday that remembers Christ’s death, burial, & resurrection. If you talk to people some are catholic so they celebrate the entire from Fat Tuesday to Easter, others only celebrate Mardi Gras & the big party treating as a way to do everything in cities like Galveston, Mobile, Alabama & New Orleans, others only do easter by going to Church & celebrating Christ’s sacrifice, over time it has changed because what it means to people varies. The same goes for other holidays like St. Patrick’s Day to someone Irish, Juneteenth to someone black in the south, or even Christmas to someone religious. Knowing where a person stands in context to a holiday is a crucial thing & helps to know.
Personal Views & Holidays
Like I mentioned before the knowing a person’s personal views or perspectives about holidays we become clear in the process, if we know another person we get closer to comprehending others actions, look at Christmas now it’s a total different variation compared to the 70’s or so it supposed to be based around Christ’s birth (which is the supposed basis of the 25th of December) & it got turned into a religious event after a while at its center, but over time it has changed into a totally different thing, one that is very commercial & is pushed longer it seems like every year, now a majority of people are more inclined to buy presents for others even going through the tedious task of Black Friday after thanksgiving instead of just enjoying others in their lives, bottom line trying to get the perfect gift for people which is part of the reason for it, however if we look at that one part everyone does it differently, some people like to put all this time, energy, & money into this one day as consumers, others are the opposite of that not putting so much pressure on one day, I know as a younger person my mother had cancer & as a result she wanted to do lots for me including going big on Christmas gifts but over time as a family we came to a consensus to not put so much pressure on getting gifts for December 25th & just wait for another time to get things for each other, having this view on this particular thing I don’t take part in things like Black Friday regularly, but I’ll get things for younger cousins & close family every now & then, same applies for religious things that come with the holiday, people on Christmas that view it as a religious matter and go to things like mass & participate in things like the Christmas play at church as a result & some people don’t do those things because of personal or religious views like someone that is a Jehovah’s witness as an example (they don’t participate in any events or holidays because of it), like looking at the spectrum overall everyone does things differently, an example of this is my life, being raised by religious people & family I grew up in a home that was non denominational Christian in the Church of Christ, so we didn’t celebrate Xmas like that because it is not a prominent thing, however we didn’t step in front of others to stop them from partaking in everything we just didn’t partake in everything, this carried over into my young adult life I may not do things like Christmas mass or even bigger religious things however I’m not going to be hypocritical a say I don’t do anything when I actually do some things like last Xmas I had a Charlie Brown tree, a Cowboys wreath on my door even did some gifts during that period not really expecting nothing, I just wanted to do so. Every person has different opinions & intentions when it comes to different holidays on how & why they do things it just comes down to being mindful of others because not everyone has the same ideals we do.
Epilogue
Living in this time everyone has different ideas and perspectives on how things should be done or how they roll, which is no different from previous times however the difference is anytime something is said now it’s under meticulous scrutiny because when it is said now it can be shared on social media/the internet & even live their, holidays are not excluded from this. I remember in recent memory people got up in arms about people saying “Happy Holidays” rather than “Merry Christmas” which is logical because everyone doesn’t celebrate Christmas but do other ones which makes them outliers or a minority, although this didn’t stop people from throwing fits over what someone else is saying, this also happened with the cups last year at Starbucks, they made the decision to take merry Christmas off their cups but stuck with red cups & green cups for the holiday season which was their decision as a company but a vocal minority said they weren’t for it when they made the change. When we get down to brass tacks people are always gonna have different perspectives fueled by personal events & religious outlooks throughout life same with holidays whether they happen after October in the hotbed of everything or another part of the year, however it comes down to us being civil even though we have platforms to voice our stances on something even more now & actually being open to others perspectives even if we don’t share the same views or like theirs in general. This is just a thought.