Christmas is a time of joy and festivity, yet it is also a season ripe with contradictions. It is a time for gift giving, but also a time for consuming. It’s a celebration of tradition and togetherness, while also being a holiday that reflects societal pressures and conformity. We look to 6 philosophers – Nietzsche, Marx, Arendt, Weil, Russell and Epicurus – to see whether we can find a path between joy and overindulgence this Christmas. Together, these thinkers challenge us to rethink how we approach the holiday period, and ultimately make the most of it.

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“What is tradition? A higher authority which one obeys, not because it commands what is useful to us, but because it commands..."

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Friedrich Nietzsche offers a provocative critique of tradition that still resonates with modern secular Christmas celebrations. In The Gay Science, Nietzsche famously declared that "God is dead," yet he acknowledged that the "shadow of God" would continue to linger. Christmas, even in secular contexts, retains elements of its religious origins. For many, the holiday is celebrated as a cultural tradition rather than a religious one. And with nearly every country having some break from Japan to Sweden to celebrate the season in their own style it really can’t be directly attached to the traditional Christian/pagan holiday. Nietzsche, however, had little patience – unlike his attitude to everything else – for unexamined adherence to tradition, which he saw as a form of obedience to an abstract authority.