The author of the Snowman book, Raymond Briggs famously always disliked Christmas and thought the cartoon twee. His picture book includes no Santa or Christmas, just a boy who makes a snowman, which comes to life and is melting next morning.

40 years later, he's bloody sick of it.

“I was fed up with it years ago. I’m even more fed up with it now it’s been going on for nearly 40 bloody years.”

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/dec/21/raymond-briggs...

Another tradition is that Jews eat Chinese food on christmas. Don’t find that bizarre at all.

Chinese restaurants (or maybe more accurately restaurants run by Chinese immigrants) used to be the only places open on Christmas. For anyone wanting to eat out, it was a defacto non-choice.

It might be seen as a tradition now, but like most traditions, the origins were practical.

As a Swede I think the main difference between "these are movies and shows that are popular around Christmas" is that it's always shown at the exact same time on the exact same channel and becomes a strict part of Christmas eve planning.

This has its roots in that non-state broadcast TV was outlawed until 1992 (satellite TV broadcast from the UK was the workaround but far from universally adopted)

The takeaway for me: “Kalle Anka is almost like gathering around the fire in old times and listening to fairy tales.”

I hope that these shared cultural experiences can occasionally pull us back together after being scattered by algorithmically generated bubbles of social media.

In America it's A Christmas Story I think. They have a TV channel dedicated to reruns of it.

Christmas Story 24 hours on TBS. Though there are plenty of other Christmas staples such as the stop motion Frosty and Rudolph films, It's a Wonderful Life, and Charlie Browns Christmas.