When I was five I discovered that Santa wasn't real on my own. Now I realize that even at such a young age I was questioning things that didn't adhere to science. What I tend to do is try and enjoy it. Impress the santa at the mall by saying you want a basketball and not and electronic gaming system. Go to church and enjoy wine when you're underage. Make gifts for people to ignore the crowds. Have fun! Try celebrating a new holiday that you've never tryed! Go sledding! Watch movies with talking dogs in them! It may turn out to be your favorite time of year.

As I’ve gotten older and my children have gotten older I have started to really dislike it. I don’t enjoy shopping and trying to figure out what someone else wants. It always just feels like a money exchange. I’d rather keep my money and get what I want than buy/get things that may not be liked. Also the religious crap everywhere makes me roll my eyes. Right now the best part about it is getting time off of work. Maybe if I have grandkids one day it will change.

I grew up happily celebrating it with a loving family but have come to despise it. It's a pretty time of year but why we can't do pretty without putting great stresses on people, financially as well as emotionally and expectationally, I don't understand. I don't want presents and don't wish to give them. It's not that I'm a Scrooge (as is often charged or alluded to) but that I don't have much money and do have very poor judgment for what is appropriate and for how many. I get anxious about not meeting equal giving and can't stand it. I hate the religious hymns and think the winter songs are cliched or silly. I don't wish to hear them but both are regularly shoved down my throat if I go out. So, I don't go out much from Thanksgiving to Christmas. I like being alone so that hasn't been a big deal. This year my circumstances are different, I'm around some people whom I owe and do celebrate it, so I'll probably have to be more social. Damn.
Trees don't belong inside a house, dying. They belong in a forest or front yard, alive. The fires people start over these things are just stupid. STOP IT!
And don't get me started on the massive lie concerning Santa. I think it's the single largest cause for distrust of adults born in the trusting hearts of kids. Why a parent would want to cause such distrust and loss of respect is beyond me. Of course, nobody acknowledges that they've lost those things because it would be to "miss the spirit." Therefore, many choose to dive headlong into that spirit as a denial of their lost trust. Maybe I'll post something more about this later (on a night when I'm feeling particularly miffed by the whole sordid affair {trying to put some humor to my remarks}).

I don't actually really celebrate Christmas anymore... although i may take advantage of sales to buy myself some new stuff.

just treat it as the midwinter festival it actually is. enjoy family and friendship. and gift-giving feels good if its well-meaning and appropriate - not just mechanical. Happy Holidays!! (Holy days????)

I'm amazed and I even find it funny that you guys need to have a "coping mechanism."

You've made a decision to be what you are, what you believe in. You've made a commitment to yourself - a conviction. Now you have to be firm in your resolve. Don't torture yourselves with hatred, bitterness and dread.

I know all of you are intelligent. So, simply keep it that way . . . kisses and hugs to all you.

I boycott the stores all together.. Hate the music/the commercialized junk they sell. Its ridiculous. People spend money on shit they can't afford for people they usually don't like just because its the "thing to do". Fuck that! I don't buy into the craziness of it all, never have and never will.

I like the time of year. Especially saying "Happy Holidays" to the "Merry Christmas" folks. The Christians hijacked the winter festival anyway so why not enjoy the original.

I don't dread Christmas. It's a good time to spend with family and friends. The only thing I really despise is the six weeks of incessant Christmas music.

Ba humbug!! I used to dread it, the present buying - I hate shopping and it's hard to know what to get people sometimes, the commercialism, the carols, the compulsory christmas church service when we were kids, the family squabbles, and the annoyance about being lied to about santa's existence then being expected to continue the lie for my little brothers once I knew the truth. Now most of the family live interstate so it's easy to avoid all that bullshit and almost completely avoid xmas. I don't send cards and I reply to seasons greeting with 'Enjoy your holiday break and have a great new year!' or something similar. It doesn't bother me much now apart from there being even less of interest onTV on xmas day.

As an atheist with a secular, non-believing Jewish upbringing the entire season is a reminder that I don't fit in, that I am a marginalized and sometimes hated minority, and that forces currently in control of the USA want to ram Christianity down my throat. Despite that I enjoy the lights, the trees, and the decorations and ten years ago I caved and brought the seasonally decorated tree into my home for my children's enjoyment.

'Santa Clause's birthday' is about as gross a period as it is possible to endure: the gluttony, the materialism. "Buy, buy and buy, and save, save!" Can't figure that one out; every time I "save" that way my bank account gets smaller. It is Nov. 7 and it has already started and will go on for another two months. Somewhere through the torture I shut off the TV and radio so I don't have to listen to that insane howling. My visits to even the grocery store are made as fast as possible. "How to cope?" Grit your teeth; there is only another 60 days of torture.

I do, I dread Christmas.
I was at Menard's the day after Halloween and they already had Christmas decorations up.
I think most of the reason I dislike it so much is that by the time it finally arrives, I've OD'd on it.
It's my sons birthday so I celebrate that.

"What's Christmas time to you but a time for paying bills without money; a time for finding yourself a year older and not an hour richer; a time for balancing your books and having every item in 'em through a round dozen of months presented dead against you? If I could work my will," said Scrooge indignantly, "every idiot who goes about with 'Merry Christmas', on his lips should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart. He should!"

"There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say," returned the nephew, "Christmas among the rest. But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round- apart from the veneration due to its scared name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that- as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the years, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!" - A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

I have a love-hate relationship with Christmas. While it goes without saying that I dislike the religious aspects, what I really dislike is when I am alone like I will be this year. I love the twinkling lights, the little children with their sense of awe because of presents coming their direction, and the aspect people getting together and just enjoying each other's company. The part I don't like is when I am alone on Christmas eve and Christmas day. Even though I wouldn't go where there was religious things happening, I feel extra alone and lonely when I am alone at those times. Probably, this goes back to my childhood and to the cultural loading that happens about how "Christmas" is "supposed" to be.

I hate christmas with my family because my family is extremely religious and christmas is the worst. I am the only atheist in my family. Last year I stayed out of christmas with the family to "work". I'm not sure what I'm going to do this year. It causes me alot of anxiety just thinking about it.