Excess In Winter

[nailit]

An aside from 'chaterbank' frivolaties...
A serious question,
Just what is it in the human psyche that feels the need to over indulge at this time of year?
We all know that the xmas festivities are the offshoot of earlier pagan festivities where people indulged in an excess of food, drinking etc.
My question is why?
We dont live in a culture where food is scarce or where alcohol is a 'once a year' luxury so why do we feel the need in the 21st century to over indulge at this time of year?

[sandyRoe]

The weather's usually dark and miserable. Maybe we need something to look forward to.

[shoota]

Is there a need for Christmas?

[Elina]

Carrying on what's thought of as tradition & expected of us, that's eventually led to excess over the years fuelled by t.v / media advertising & magazines & spiralled out of control in to gluttony and waste ... for some not all.

[nailit]

//Is there a need for Christmas?//
I think the clue is
//We all know that the xmas festivities are the offshoot of earlier pagan festivities //
I could be wrong of course....

[nailit]

Dont think the ancient Romans had tv media magazines etc Elina

[Elina]

No, but our festivities are learned experiences through generations of families. The media has just exploited all that.

[stuey]

Why the excess in Winter? Well, I'll tell you; and not a lot of people know this. You see, we are all evolved from bears, and bears still today hibernate for most of the Winter. However, before doing so, they gorge, and gnaw, and gulp, and devour everything in site that they can possibly throw down their gullets. Now there is still a vestige of that "sleeping bear'" within us. Notice the old "bears" in the family gatherings who, after gorging themselves silly, pat their protruding stomachs and slowly drift off into sonambulance...And that is the true story of why we do it.

[shoota]

My gay sergeant when I was a cop called me a bear....

[Psybbo]

Did he hug you?

[stuey]

Well, Shoota, that's what you get for calling people names. You called gay, and he called you bear.

[Hopkirk]

It is our nature to be lazy and overeat.

Most of the time we can't, but we are sort of given 'permission' to do so today.

[woofgang]

Moffat nails it as usual
"On every world, wherever people are, in the deepest part of the winter, at the exact midpoint, everybody stops, and turns, and hugs, as if to say "Well done. Well done, everyone! We're halfway out of the dark." Back on Earth, we called this Christmas, or the Winter Solstice. On this world, the first settlers called it the Crystal Feast."

[jno]

we've acquired our habits over something like 200,000 years, and they've remained strong because they've conferred an evolutionary advantage over people who didn't eat while they could. They're not going to be ditched in 100 years just because we now have a McDonald's down the road.

[stuey]

Woofgang, who, pray tell, is Moffat?

[woofgang]

Steven Moffat (sigh)

[stuey]

Never heard of him.

[woofgang]

your loss