Addicted to Christmas

I don't care much for Christmas, if I had my way we might just leave the whole thing alone. But this year I started having a yearning for it, and then I suddenly realized why everybody gets all Christmas Crazy.

Christmas makes you act the way you are supposed to act and it makes you hope that others will too. People give around this time of year in all kinds of ways and that feels good. People get together with family and friends, and even if your family is not your friend it is still something that should be done a little more regularly than most do. People get gifts from others which creates this sense that others were thinking of you, that feels pretty awesome. Finally, people eat food and get drunk and take pictures so they remember it all. Tim Ferriss says one of the keys to happiness is eating a meal with five or more people once a week. Sometimes I'm pretty excited when I can catch a meal once a week with somebody over the age of two.

The point of this is to say that it is a shame that we go in to credit card debt and take some of the precious time we have off acting the way we act when the "feel good" aspects of Christmas can be changed into a lifestyle. When was the last time you gave somebody a gift and said I love you, on a regular Tuesday in March? When was the last time you got together with friends and ate, drank and took pictures, because it was Flag Day in Zanzabar?

Sometimes I dislike Christmas because of how people act, but mostly I dislike Christmas because it shows us how we could be the rest of year.