Christmas should be cancelled

My overall observation from his arguments is that my opponent actually genuinely enjoys celebrating Christmas – he is one of the lucky few – like many others I dread Christmas Day as I have to spend it with my family: being nice even though I might not feel like being nice; playing ridiculous parlour games and watching inane television programmes like the Strictly Come Dancing [1] Christmas Special and - and here's what I really resent - NOT GOING TO THE PUB, not only because my family considers it bad mannered to abandon them but because also because most of the pubs are CLOSED ON CHRISTMAS DAY! And on top of all that, I have to waste time buying my family presents – every Christmas Eve I tell them not to get me anything so that I won't have to get them anything, but they every year they play the same trick and tell me that they have already bought me gifts so I am more or less obliged to go to the 24-hour garage and buy them family-sized bags of M&M's; road atlases; brake fluid; wiper blades or whatever. Anyway, just to clarify, I was only arguing that the public holiday on 25th December should be withdrawn, not that Christmas should be banned – people should be allowed to take annual leave to celebrate religious festivals just as Jews take time off for Chanukah and Muslims take time off for Eid al-Adha – but if it wasn't officially recognised Christmas' popularity would wane and it would no longer be considered mandatory to go shopping for presents. Moving on to the debate, I will accept my opponent's argument that being a Christian doesn't mean you have to go to church, or pray, or believe in God and that, in any case, Christmas has become divorced from it's religious origins. I also accept that not economic activity ceases on Christmas Day but it still costs industry a fortune and I don't agree that the New Year's Day public holiday should be cancelled because people go out and get drunk and party all night on New Year's Eve and would, therefore, be worse than useless the next day at work. Now, I would like to specifically address my opponent's assertion that Christmas is "fun" as follows: For "The eager anticipation of the holiday" read: "months of enduring incredibly aggravating Christmas adverts". For "Family and friends coming together" read suffering For "Great food" read "putting up with hour after hour of your wife / mother droning on about how long it took her to shop for it and cook it. " For " Singing Christmas carols" read "Having to tell carol singers to come back at Christmas and to clear off before you set the dogs on them. " For "Exchanging gifts" read "having to fight your way through the crowds of Christmas shoppers for the privilege of spending money on presents that people probably won't like and then have to pretend to like what they bought you. " For "Trimming the tree" read "waste valuable drinking time down the pub on Christmas Eve trying top get the damned fairy lights to work. " For "Mistletoe" read "Having to kiss the fat woman from next door. " For "Sharing the joys of laughter and good cheer" read "Arguing about cheating at charades and being shouted at for drinking too much. " For "And if you are really against the whole Christmas celebration, the good news is that participation is optional" read "no matter how much you protest, participation in the annual family get-together is never ‘optional'. " Finally, I do realise that some people are irresponsible with money and will get into debt regardless, but surely we shouldn't give them encouragement to do so? In conclusion, I've had enough of Christmas already and it hasn't even arrived yet – next year I'm going to spend December on some remote island in the South Pacific drinking exotic cocktails served by topless Polynesian girls with names like Lei-Mi and Fuki-Fuki and forget about the "festive season" altogether. Thank you. [1] . http://www.bbc.co.uk...