This House would cancel Christmas once every ten years

I will now move into my opening substantives in favour of cancelling Christmas once a decade. Substantive I: Absence makes the heart grow fonder We all know the differences between how Christmas is in books and fairytales and how Christmas ends up in real life. In the books, Christmas is always a time of joy and peace, with people sitting around an open fire, children happily opening presents and gratefully rejoicing at the sight of their new trinkets, and general all-round happiness. Does this actually happen in reality? Rarely, if ever. Recent studies suggest that most families will have five arguments on Christmas Day, with the first one typically starting at 10:13am [1]. This happens because we don't appreciate it enough. We're used to seeing the mass celebration aspect of Christmas come round once a year without fail. For this reason, Christmas just becomes this perpetual source of anger, resentment, and stress. But this is not in keeping with the real spirit of Christmas - an argument you will hear a lot of from Pro - and we feel that Christmas has lost its way. If we were to cancel all the hoo-hah once every ten years, and have an 'off-year' (the Christian festival wouldn't be cancelled, the state would just treat it like it treats Hannukah or a similar holiday - i. e. , basically ignoring it), we would learn to appreciate Christmas more. Fields in crop rotation always have a fallow year, to give them time to rest and regrow. Why shouldn't Christmas be the same? Substantive II: Christmas has been hijacked, so we should give it back So many of the traditions which, in public consciousness, are deeply ingrained with 'Christmas' are not Christian in the slightest and are merely pagan and national customs which have been added to a pre-existing Christian festival. Nowhere in the Bible does it say anything about Christmas Trees, or carol singing. There is no Royal Christmas Message in the Bible. And gift-giving is kept to a minimum, with presents only given to the Baby Jesus - not everyone. So what we can see is that the traditional, pure, true, 'vanilla' Christmas has been horrendously violated over the years. We have taken Christmas away from the true Christians, most of whom acknowledge that the holiday has become far too consumer-focussed (see next substantive). Therefore, once every ten years, we should let Christmas return to its roots and let the real Christians (not just people who are Christian so that they receive Easter Eggs and presents) have their holiday back. Nine out of ten years, Christmas would operate as normal, as we acknowledge that permanently cancelling the non-religious aspects of Christmas would have devastating consequences. But that doesn't mean we can't have a natural Christmas occasionally. Substantive III: Modern consumerist Christmas is unhealthy Christmas has become too commercial - DDO has already agreed on this therefore we will take it as true for the purposes of this debate [2]. 54% of people think that Christmas is 'overrated'. 40% of people say that Christmas is just an excuse for time off [3]. Therefore, we have established that Christmas has lost its way and is far too centred around the commercial aspects and not around the spiritual or even the moral aspects. We believe that this is unhealthy because it encourages a culture where people can simply expect to be showered with gifts twice a year (including birthdays). This holiday, along with Halloween (which Pro would cancel completely, but that's for my next debate), encourages people - particularly children - to simply expect presents. This is borderline extortion on the part of those whose money and time is simply being demanded. It is too much to ask to permanently strip back the consumer aspects of Christmas in one fell swoop, that much Proposition accepts. But Opposition must equally accept that this consumerism is a bad thing and contributes to the theft of Christmas from the Christians (see previous substantive). Therefore, we should have a non-consumerist Christmas once every ten years. This will encourage the other Christmases to be less centred around presents, though I will elaborate on this in my next speech. These are our first three substantives in favour of the cancellation of Christmas once a decade, though more will be included in R3. I wish you bah humbug and hand you back to Opposition. I'm going to revel in the irony of debating Christmas in June by going outside and running through the sunshine. [1] . http://www.dailymail.co.uk... [2] . http://www.debate.org... [3] . http://www.eauk.org...