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Originally Posted by nonightowl
Thriller is my favorite music video period, Halloween or not.  That is just SO COOL. All those zombies doing hip hop! And nobody can sound scarier than Vincent Price.  No Halloween is complete without hearing The Monster Mash, Deadman's Party, or Purple People Eater.
True one can enjoy Halloween alone, like watching a scary movie and eating too much candy which is what I did.
There is a lot of prep work for the holidays after Thanksgiving, and the latter itself is plenty of work. SO much shopping, prepping and cooking to prepare a meal that gets wolfed down in minutes.... No wonder my parents seemed so crabby when the holidays were close. I used to nag them about when are they going to put the decorations up, not realizing the work and time involved...We kept the decorations up until New Year's.
I've gotten Christmas catalogs as early as JULY, but not in the last couple of years, probably due to COVID like many things.
I'm not a Scrooge either but the emphasis on making it about family and friends is gut wrenching. I think that's worse than the commercialization of it. I'm not into that whole spending thing but there's nobody to spend on anyway, if I wanted to.
You're right that Christmas should be about the people, not the gifts. This is why "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" is my favorite holiday special (followed by It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown). As hard as the Grinch tried to steal or stop Christmas by taking the gifts, decorations, food, etc. he couldn't. It's in the heart and his heart grew 3 sizes. That's the message in that story.
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I agree with everything about Christmas and the effort it takes to host others and decorate, I was one of those kids that pressured my parents to get those decorations up as well and looking back I know for a fact that was super annoying. It takes great effort to put on a facade around kids and other adults, also there's too many forced obligations placed on people and you can always tell when others are secretly miserable and don't want to take part in something.
People shouldn't be pressured to take place in family and even work related traditions, people shouldn't be forced to interact with those who they may not care to be with especially if they barely interact with them during any other time of the year and it doesn't seem very genuine behind the forced smiles either. In fact when the holidays end right after New Years, I always notice a sudden change in people's behavior since they seem truly relieved and genuinely happy that it's all over and most people will admit they're so glad it's all over and that it's time to move on and get back to our regular lives.