The reasons why Christmas is overrated, in paragraph format.

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

Stop me if you've heard this one: "I can't stand the Christmas season. First they start calling it Xmas, then you've got this Santa fellow who is basically a middle-man between the toy companies and the gullible family that buys $20 pieces of plastic crap for their newly-greedy brats. Now It's A Wonderful Life, as if it weren't long enough in the first place, now reaches saga proportions while being interrupted every 1.5 minutes by an ad for, most appropriately, Crown Royal hard liquor. It's all just too commercial."

It's a fact. The day after Thanksgiving kicks off the year's biggest month-long orgy of consumerism. The critics and cynics, and some moralists, will decry it all and wish for the golden days of yore. For the rest, and more rational segment, of the population, however, fear not. The Christmas season is still a magical time.

English: Santa Claus with a little girl Esperanto:...

January 3, 1863 cover of Harper's Weekly, one of t...

the sexy santa assistants were there to take a pho...

1. Santa Claus - Sure he's gotten a bad rap, but what harm does he honestly do? What, pray tell, is wrong with alleviating what would otherwise be children's guilt of asking for loads and loads of Christmas loot? Kids are kids, not young adults, needing and deserving of a little childish fantasy.

2. The weather - For those of us lucky enough to live in temperate climate zones, the seasonal weather of snow and ice makes us feel very much alive and vulnerable as it does safe and secure. On tends to begin appreciating the value of a warm, snug house whilst finding themselves stranded in the blistering cold, car in a state of flux. The snow in itself is like a new beginning, a big, white canvas on which to draw.

3. The New Year - We all need our limits. Near the end of...