It's time to restore our traditional mid-winter festival to its former glory

While I am as much a "Scrooge" as my opponent, I will be arguing as to why we should not bring Yuletide back. Please keep in mind that my position is not focused on asserting that Christmas should be upheld, but rather that Yuletide should not be instituted. First, the whole issue begs the question as to what holidays are. Basically, they're celebrations of ideas society, or a particular culture, agrees with. Especially if you approach this from a secular point of view, where "truth" and "values" are impossible to establish, then everyone's opinions go. What matters is who is in the majority. The minority can yell all they want, but until they have some form of leverage, the opinion of the powerful is upheld [1]. Now, times have certainly shifted in the Western world. It may, in fact, be time for relativism and secularism and secularism to assert their gaining power, and overthrow some of the Christian traditions and strongholds. However, overthrowing Christian ideas is not what we're here to argue. The argument is that Yuletide, a pagan, spiritualistic celebration should be brought back into the mainstream. On what grounds would we discard one religious celebration for another, even more mystical one? If the grounds for overthrowing one system was that it exerted it's power in society, replacing it with another system that makes proclamations would simply transfer said power, leaving us with the same problem [2]. If the grounds for overthrowing the current system is because it is based on false premises, than on what grounds are we to bring back Yuletide, an arguably more superstitiously based notion? But not only does Yuletide fail to reflect our current society's value for intellectualism, it significantly conflicts with our modern day value of work. While schools would be largely unaffected by a twelve day holiday, how fitting would such a holiday be within the context of Wall Street? While we could institute Yuletide and only allot one or two days for it's official, national celebration, what then would be the point of bringing back a twelve day holiday and calling it superior to a one day holiday? Yuletide just doesn't fit in with the way our modern world works [3]. As we clearly see the lack of Yuletide spirit that could be garnered in our modern society, one sees the real problem my opponent has with this time of year, as he states, "Of course, going forward, we should still keep the seasonal greetings cards; the gifts; the roast turkey with all the trimmings; the champagne, port and brandy and the decorated trees – they have no connection with Christianity at all." My opponent really isn't arguing for the legitimacy of Yuletide, but rather for the decommissioning of the Christian sector's power. Now, that would be a fine discussion to have, but it has no bearing as to whether Yuletide should be brought back to a culture that is significantly different, will bring in traditions that make original Yuletide relatively unrecognizable, etc. I thank my opponent for thinking critically about why we celebrate the things that we do, although I remain firm in the opinion that his resolution is not a fitting one. Sources: [1] http://www.equip.org... [2] http://www.secularhumanism.org... [3] http://www.businessinsurance.org...