e192. How to Win Christmas & Influence People

Christmas traditions are huge part of popular culture. In fact, they’re such a huge part of popular culture that — despite the so-called war on Christmas — they pretty much infuse the western winter holidays regardless of your religion or beliefs. It’s the “holiday” season. But, no matter how secular we try to make things,…

CFC: Cards, Baking, Music, Shelf Elves & Other Holiday Traditions

From Katya: Sometimes I think being a scholar of culture boils down to constantly recognizing that, actually, it absolutely is that deep. Pretty much all the time. We were talking about seasonal cultural practices that we found interesting. Mav brought up sending Christmas cards as a tradition that made him feel like he was celebrating…

e138. Holiday Tradition and Ritual in the Time of COVID

It’s the holiday season. In the United States we just celebrated Thanksgiving, and in the coming weeks that will be followed by Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, New Years, Pancha Ganapati, Yule, Festivus, Saturnalia, Slackernalia and probably 1000 other winter holidays that get celebrated somewhere around the world. These holidays are often commemorated by coming together with…

Call for Comments: Do we really like holidays anyway?

From Mav: As I finished teaching one of my Friday only classes, one of my students wished me a “Have a Happy Thanksgiving… or whatever” on his way out the door. It struck me that he was not just trying to be nice; as he was finishing the statement he realized the relative futility of…