Does today feel "Christmassy" to you?

No. Fascism is on the rise, my livelihood is literally in danger. I'm spending these days preparing for the worst, so when people try to talk to me about joy and family, it comes off as somewhere between tone-deaf and gaslighting
- It's both on the rise and now acceptable.
  My brown family that started families with other brown people talked about the facism the entire time.
  My brown family that started family with white people all believe that facism isn't a thing.
  The future is not good
  
  Careful outing yourself as a brown family, this apparently means you're illegal and need to be turned into immigration authorities in coastal Oregon.
  https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/dec/22/lincoln-oregon-brown-people-immigration-letter
- That’s terrible! What’s your livelihood?
  
  With AI that could literally be anything now. Or they could be LGBTQ. Or black. Or a woman.

The kids are over the moon with their gifts. Ma's in her bath tub and I'm in my cups. And I'm about to settle in for a long evening of Nethack. So ya, I'm feeling pretty good for Christmas evening.
I hope everyone here who is feeling down finds something in the new year to make them happy.
- I hope Santa left exactly what you wanted in the sokoban branch.

No, it's weird. It's like the magic of it is gone this year. I want to be jolly, and indulge, but I can not. I bust my ass off all year, i look forward to this is on time of year where I always have said fuck work, and responsibilities from Dec 20th to about Jan 3rd. But this year is just hollow. Like a depression came apon me. Like taking a bite of a chocolate bar anticipating thar sweetness, only to have no flavor, just mouth feel.
- Yeah same here. I didn't even bother putting out Christmas lights this year even though we made a bunch of custom decorations a few years back.

I'm tryna get that Christmussy.

My mom died on Mother's Day this year. Really wanted to just skip the holidays. No tree and decorations. She liked to do them every year. Little present ideas. It was pretty quiet this year. But we made the best of it.
- We just lost my fiance's mom 2 weeks ago. They're a very close, very big family and their mom was a true matriarch. She also didn't leave any plans for any of the complex situations she's left behind, so her and her sisters have been stuck in all this legal and business drama instead of being able to grieve, and they just lost their dad at the end of last year.
  We just got engaged this summer and she was already heartbroken her dad wouldn't be there, and now she suddenly has no parents when she would talk to them every day. I'm not a big people person, but both her parents were really good to her and they all loved each other very much, and I feel really crushed this holiday season, so I can't begin to feel what they all must be feeling.
  You have my sympathy. It stinks. I liked her parents more than most of my own family, and I'm sad I won't have anyone but my brother anymore to have good family time with.
  I'm sure you had a really great mom, and I hope you get a proper chance to find the closure you need eventually and get to remember all the positive things again. I hope this was helpful, I feel I'm not great expressing emotional things, as I'm not used to feeling that close to many people, so please take this as my deepest sympathy and caring.
  
  Thanks for sharing. I didn't expect anything from anyone. Just getting things off my chest. But I appreciate it. And my condolences as well.
- I'm so sorry. This was my second Christmas since losing mine. She was always so excited about Christmas, Santa, decorations, all of it. Missing her made me want to do it a little more this year but I got started oto late. We still had a really good day - husband and kids picked up the slack.
  
  Yeah the one thing I did do was attempt the cutout cookies she did. I found her recipe but it was very sparse in the directions. But they turned out great. So I'm glad I'll still have those. Apparently cream of tartar is what gave it that special acidic "Christmas feel" I've always wondered about over the years.

No it feels like mid September.
I shouldn't be sweating in December. I'm tired of this 80° weather. And it's only going to get hotter every year...

This year was shit overall in every part of o the world (greetings from Venezuela). You can't have a Christmas spirit went the world is literally collapsing around you. Authoritarians are winning elections, people is dying, the world is getting hotter (and not in a sexy way), and yet, you have to go to work tomorrow 'cause you have to eat.
Don't fall into despair though, that shit makes everything worse. Hope is a powerful fuel.

This is the most christmasy christmas I've had since I was a kid. Probably has something to do with my girl being 3 this year and really into it.

Welcome to being older. The magic goes and the cynisism sets in. There is still hope though. If you can clear your eyes of the razzle dazzle of unfettered consumerism, you can realise it's a nice time to spend with those you care about. Makes it an even better time of the year. Edit. I realise that sounds too flippantly jolly. My point was that for all of human history this has been a festival to stave off the deprivations of starving and freezing. I just feel this< angle is a good way to look at it.

i work jewelery so it’s always a huge shitshow. had a big stupid blowout argument with my dad over the same political shit we always fight over, so i’m sure that’s only gonna get worse over the next 4 years.
a lotta times i wish it wasn’t a family business.
- My family tries to talk political shit with me, I just stop them right there and say "I don't wanna talk politics" if they press it, I walk away mid sentence, they're family, you can be obtuse to them.

Not even a little. I went out in shorts and a t-shirt for about an hour, exchanged banal pleasantries with family until my anxiety got the better of me and I had to leave, sat in a room with no windows watching old shows and snacking, and am waiting until exhaustion allows me to sleep a couple hours until I go to work on one of the two days remaining on my schedule. After that I might not have any work for months unless I can find something close by that doesn't make me legitimately contemplate things. I have a broken tooth, some kind of respiratory thing going on, and an unmentionable medical issue that really needs to be seen by a doctor but I can't afford one and my government insurance was denied because I made a couple thousand more this year than last year.
On the bright side, my truck is finally working again and assuming the now-slowly-leaking-while-on fuel pump doesn't catch a spark before I can afford to have it replaced I don't have to share a car this week. Which is nice.

Christmas hasn't brought me enjoyment since middle school. Same with life in general.

No. It's boxing day for me.

Yes. There’s piles of shit in my house and everywhere i go my senses are assaulted by Christmas bullshit.

Ive been unemployed so I don't have the feeling of time off the holiday brings.

Well concidering that we have just had boxing day lunch - not much like Christmas, more like my mother's birthday

Sort of, but in a bad way.
Anyway, this year we even omitted that tree, so I didn't have to bother with that.
Specifically today? It's 2AM, not much went on, just doing my things, thankfully nothing related to Christmas.
I sent my cash too late so I ran out of Mullvad time. I paid for a week of IVPN and the setup didn't fair too well.
"Bypass VPN for local networks" in their app on Android doesn't work, so I lost ability to use KDE Connect for now.
On laptop I just used plain WG with NetworkManager on Plasma. It seems to not accept anything but 0.0.0.0/0 in AllowedIPs which is something I've been screwing around with for a while until I found someone else from a year ago with the same issue. I even tried 0.0.0.0/1, 128.0.0.0/1 rather than the larger calculated list, bug to no avail. It just doesn't work.
I guess I'll just use OpenVPN on Android. The second doesn't seem to matter much.
I am also trying to figure out whether what I've found is infinite unthrottled (almost) free mobile data glitch with T-Mobile, or some kind of sorcery I missed in their documentation.
- Someone hit the spiked eggnog a bit too hard.

Nope. The world is on fire, society is going to hell in a handbasket, and I miss my mom.