Let’s move Christmas

[MissMuffetisin]

It’s crazy to have it in December. The weather can be awful - snows already forecast for the end of the week. And we’re all travelling, trying to shop, attending parties on icy nights. According to my ( admittedly brief) research, scholars think Jesus was either born in September or spring - far mores sensible times of year to have Christmas. Would work for the southern hemisphere too. The consensus seems to be the Romans changed it to December to fit with there solstice festival. They’ve been gone a while now, surely we can change it to a more temperate time of year !

The entire point is to have a celebration at the winter solstice. You can dress it up with whatever name or cultural baggage you want to attach, but it has always been a festival to get us through the dark and scary winter.

you can move the religious event if you want and call it whatever you want. Most people will continue to celebrate the solstice even if they call it something else.

It's too early, should be mid to late January. Then two things happen -

The shopping frenzy lasts longer for those who enjoy that sort of thing 😂
The days are beginning to lengthen and February is not as horrible a month as January!

But I dislike Christmas intensely, could be just me (and many others I suspect even if they don't say it out loud). So I will be out of the country in a warmer climate and can ignore all the shite. Lucky me.

Christmas in UK is in the perfect place on the calendar. What needs to happen is that Australia and NZ move their Christmas to their winter solstice - in those places everything fun (summer + Christmas) happens at the same time and then you have a bleak long winter. It’s mad that they’re holding on to a random date from the Northern Hemisphere that doesn’t make any sense. What’s even more bizarre is that they even celebrate fireworks on the same November date, which is spring in the Southern Hemisphere, so you can’t see any fireworks until 9pm and it’s probably extra awful for all the nesting birds.

Celebrating Christmas in July is getting popular in Australia.

https://www.oysterworldwide.com/news/christmas-july-australia/

Two close family Birthdays in December, would be much better for me to move it a bit, February is always a bit dull. Buying Birthday and Christmas presents at the same time is tricky, birthday cards disappear and all that wrapping!

Moving it would not work for me. At least in the Christmas school hols there's festive stuff to do with them and an excuse for get togethers, parties, ice skating etc - imagine December school hols without Christmas, nothing on - it would make for a very long and miserable December holiday 😂

Yes please. Just for a change it would be nice not to have to buy gifts to give other people on MY birthday.....no-one ever gets me a gift on theirs.

It would be easier if you moved to Australia?

I believe Christs birthday or Christmas has been celebrated on December 25th since around 300ad and prior to that the 25th was the winter solstice in the Julian calendar, so why would we even contemplate moving something that has been celebrated around that time for 1700 years

Perhaps we need to keep the winter solstice - decorate the tree, get the lights up, eat and drink, but no presents and just keep it at home . Move Christmas to when the weather is better for travelling and shopping - be easier to host a big family if the weather was good enough to use the garden. There’s a gap for a holiday in September

Noooo! Don’t force me to live through months of bleak winter without a festival of twinkly lights, roaring fires and delicious food to see me through.

No because it makes winter worth it! In fact it’s made me like winter a lot more.

We are mammals. We should sleep from October to March but as we insist on continuing to work every day for the same hours as in the summer we need a break.

By December 25th the days are already getting longer. Hold that thought.

If we decided to move Christmas, we'd need something else in late December to replace it. For all the reasons people have mentioned. New Year would just spiral instead, probably. You'd simply create an extra Christmas in September.

I am 100% with you. I grew up in South Africa and I have to tell you, I MISS summer Christmas. We are agonising over how to fit friends and family into our house for Christmas dinner this year - if it was summer, no problem as we could eat outside. It's cold and dark so the children get about an hour to play outside and are otherwise cooped inside. Totally agree re Christmas parties and events etc and the cold and ice - it's relentless and I can't stand it. We took DD to our local Christmas Tree Light On thing on Friday - it was unbearable. Cold, dark and just awful.

for years, we've avoided going home for Christmas only because we have large, dispersed family out there and logistically it gets complicated. But I think I'll take the complicated logistics over this next year!

Over my cold dead (mittened) hand

Winter without Christmas would be much worse!

It was 28 degrees here today, (down a bit from the 36 it has been all summer), with over 65% humidity (in summer it gets over 80%). I miss, miss, miss the cold, the leaves falling, the fog, dark evenings bundled up getting home to a warm house (that is not stifling and making you sweat!). Twinkling lights, seeing your breath in clouds, frost on the ground, carols, crappy (but kind of great) tv, food I know how to cook, friends and family close. Christmas decorations in a hot country look daft, like a nightclub in the daytime, the magic is gone. Christmas in the UK in August wouldn’t work. I want to wear cosy socks and sweaters and cover up, and not have to worry about the slimness (or lack thereof) of my body in hot weather clothes! I am so homesick. . . .

AAAH, I feel for you. I might be desperate for a summer Christmas, but there's nothing worse than being homesick at Christmas. I felt it a bit the first couple of years I was here and it was awful.

Also, where are you as that sounds insanely hot. My Cape Town Christmases were warm, but not excessive!

Nope nope nope. If you want a hot summer, fly to Australia. I love love LOVE Christmas and all the cold weather 🤩

The whole point of a big party at the darkest time of year is to help get us through it.

Well the whole point of Yule was that it gave the cold, hungry pagans something to look forward to and served as a reminder that longer, warmer days were ahead.

The Christians appropriated it for their own ends.

So the very point of having a festival in the middle of December is that its cold and dark outside 🤷🏻‍♀️ nothing to do with when Jesus was born.