Merry Christmas, HN

1659 points by Thorentis ↗ HN
Just wanted to wish everybody here a Merry Christmas. HN is one of those Internet communities which I would be the saddest to see go, even looking back on other communities in which I've participated over the years.

I see many posts here about loneliness, nihilism, friendships (or lack thereof) and just wanted to let everybody here know that life is never hopeless, and there are always people who care, even if they're thousands of miles away.

Please reach out to loved ones this season and let them know you love them. Life is short, and you never know when the last time you'll be wishing somebody a Merry Christmas will be.

I wish you all the very best for 2023.

235 comments

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Merry Christmas, and yes humans are stupid and petty and cruel but each one of us has the spark to be greater. My wish is for each of us have the courage to try to be just a little bit better than they were the day before.
Merry Christmas, HN! :-)

Time to reach out and appreciate/tell the people and connections that make you a better person.

Agree, I can lose Twitter, Reddit, what ever. If I lose HN I feel that would affect me the most. I appreciate a community that is not focused on politics, news, and what ever nonsense is happening in the world. Just focused on a core topic revolving around computers/technology/startups.

Merry Christmas and any other holiday you may celebrate at this time.

This.

I love Reddit for different reasons, but there’s something really unique about this community that I really hope it never loses (and it hasn’t yet so I’m optimistic!)

Happy Christmas!

Merry Christmas to all!
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Happy Holidays HN.

I’ve spent Christmas alone more than I care to admit over the last decade but this community never fails to offer insight, inspiration, and compassion.

This is a great community and I look forward to another decade of being privileged to be a member of it.

>> I’ve spent Christmas alone more than I care to admit over the last decade but this community never fails to offer insight, inspiration, and compassion.

This is my first ever Christmas eve alone. I'll see my family tomorrow, but no more inlaws, and my kid is with her mom tonight. Divorce is.... different. I've got wine and a blanket.

I'm getting back to FLOSS. Dropped a PR on OBS Studio yesterday. I hope it gets accepted as my Christmas present to the Free Software community. Take care peeps!

Just checking in to say you take care too and it’ll be tomorrow before you know it. Your kid will get to be super excited a second time tomorrow when he sees you at the front door!

Congrats on getting back to floss. I keep trying to but it’s been hard to make the time this year. Hopefully 2023 will give me a little extra time for it!

Happy Christmas mate :-)

>> Congrats on getting back to floss. I keep trying to but it’s been hard to make the time this year.

One thing I see clearly in open source is that people have lives. Participation varies a lot even among great contributors. Some very active people disappear for months only to return later. When you realize it's because everyone has a life outside where we see them, it makes them seem much more human than say coworkers in an office where we show up regardless of other things.

Get back to it when you can, or when it's good for you.

What's FLOSS?
Free/Libre Open Source Software.

“Libre” is French for free as in freedom so it’s sometimes added to emphasise the “free” means freedom of use not necessarily free in price.

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I like to think of HN as a family of its own. Sure, we're all different and we come from all sorts of different backgrounds, but we all come together and get along. It's really amazing, and it's hard to find in other places online.
I so agree. I also love how it's content vs form focused.
Christmas is one of the most difficult holidays for all the people who are different, or grew up in a emotionally/physically abusive family.

No one is alone! Merry Xmas HN!

Not a Christian, but appreciate the sentiment. Family is all dead so it's just another weekend for me, no big deal. Hope the rest of you enjoy your festivities, whatever it is you're doing.
Sorry to hear about your family - I hope you have some community around you.

Being the “uncle” of the community (who isn’t related to anyone by blood) is actually a pretty fulfilling role sometimes.

I enjoy that the commercialization of American Christmas has, a little bit, freed it from religion. Now it’s just the default Western end-of-year holiday! And we can all enjoy that :)
Let Festivus began! Airing of grievances, feats, of strength, the aluminum pole, and hanging of the clock in a bag.

No animal sacrifice, self hatred, or persecution of non-believers required.

I'm also not a Christian and also without family, but it's nice to have a day off and to take some time to make some homecooked food, something I enjoy but don't usually find the time to do. Holidays are a cultural excuse to make something deliberately not "just another weekend", it doesn't have to be a religious thing.

The Christians repurposed the existing holiday date themselves, feel free to return the favor and make your own arbitrary Saturnalia feast. :)

> just another weekend for me

except a solstice just happened!

(sol invictus ftw, in the northern hemisphere)

Is it coincidental that cultures and associated religions seem curiously to align holidays around now? is it maybe related to the physical reality of the earth's orbit and inclination of axis?

It is probably not coincidence, but the existence of solstice celebrations that new religions attempted to go-opt/overwrite with their own event.
I wish a happy and merry Christmas to each and every one of you, may your celebration of the birth of Jesus be a pleasant one.
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Thanks to all of you for making life just a little more interesting and fun. Merry Christmas. Let's make 2023 the best yet.
Happy Christmas y'all, for those of you worried about what 2023 is going to bring, just kick back for a week and enjoy the holidays, the new year will take care of itself when the time comes.

And for those of you recently laid off work, sending you positive vibes and hope you guys land on your feet soon.

Happy holidays to everyone on HN!
May 2023 be a good year for all of us. Thanks for engaging discussions, inspiring comments, and for being a beacon of interesting things in a web that is becoming increasingly bland. I appreciate the views of this community, even as they are challenging my own! Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Happy holidays to all. I can sincerely say that even though I’m not precisely on the target demographic for HN, it is by far the most valuable and pleasant community in the internet. Cheers to all.
Merry Christmas HN!
It should not be lost on anyone that this holiday comes immediately after the winter solstice, the darkest day of the year.

The future is hopeful, and the days have already started getting brighter.

Merry Christmas, HN!

Except in the southern hemisphere.
The northern hemisphere has 90% of the world’s population. It was a pretty safe general statement.
Just feeling a little left out.
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I'm southern hemisphere too - thinking 'seasonal solstice' works for me...
This is my first summer Christmas (down in Chile), it feels quite different! They also celebrate more today on the 24th and do presents at midnight
We also do a lot of beach going.

It still feels crazy for me to be in shorts and putting the barbie on to cook some steaks.

While the northern hemisphere have a celebration in the middle of winter, the young here are preparing for festival season and are on summer school holidays until end of January.

It's a topsy turvy world.

//Plus we can see the Milky Way and far too many satellites to feel truely comfortable looking up at night.

+1 to the better view of the Milky Way. Sat visibility is roughly the same though.
Christmas celebrations in the Southern Emisphere are a curious legacy of colonialism. In the same way we still celebrate Saturn every week because the Romans conquered the whole of Europe and North-Africa, people over there will celebrate Christ in the middle of summer probably forever - just because Europeans planted their flags in every nook and cranny.
Over twenty years in Australia and I still haven't gotten used to it (being 32C / 89.6F) on Christmas. So I do miss that, to be honest.

The difference to my family's place in Norway right now (-21C/-5.8F) is stark. As a child, coming out of summer, it would get colder and colder, you'd start seeing the snow .. and then soon after there'd be the magic of Christmas.

In the southern hemisphere, there's just nothing of the same. Oh well, no need to clear the driveway to drive in the morning at least.

Merry Christmas to everyone here. My first as a fully separated man after a two decade marriage/relationship fell through a year ago. Split custody of kids, I had them on Xmas Eve (the main one for me as a Norwegian) and also in the morning today Sunday / Christmas Day. House is going to be very quiet when they're gone for the day, but the peace in the house has made it all worth it. It's funny when you finally realise that the best thing you can do for them is to stop fighting for something that can't be saved - and you know everyone will come out stronger/ better as a result.

Does snow related theme seep down there as most of the largest economy are above the equator?
Yes. Snow-related imagery is the way Christmas is represented in Australia.
Summer* solstice

Southern hemisfere masterrace reporting in

Merry Solstice Substitute! HN. I wasn't brought up Christian either, but loved the tradition with friends - and giving gifts under the mid-winter evergreen tree. Wishing everyone good things in 2023.
Happy Soltice to you, too. I cringe that we have to end a tree's life so that we may maintain some tradition. Having said that, our kitten loves hanging out under the tree and smelling its pine needles. Still, I can't get over the fact that we end a tree's life for no reason at all (not that we need it to build shelter or something for our survival)
I don’t know a single person who still used a real tree. The artificial ones look incredible these days and are infinitely more sustainable, less messy, look better longer, and can be chosen to suit the room perfectly. If you’re a nerd like me you can even embed them with WS2812 RGBs and an ESP32 WLED controller, which would be way too much effort for a temporary “real” tree.
I don’t believe a Christmas tree made from fossil fuels is more sustainable than my certified organic Christmas tree grown less than 5 km from my home.

That being said I know most trees are sprayed regularly, then wrapped in plastic netting and transported long distances to a Christmas market.

that made me wonder about lifetime cost - I've just donated my wood, wire & ff-plastic tree of 20 years to another home, I don't have an answer tho' ...
The real trees everyone I know uses come from Christmas tree farms grown specifically for this purpose. They wouldn’t exist otherwise.
Happy solstice to you as well. My mother thought the same and got an evergreen in a pot which we decorated for many years until it became too big and was planted in front of the kitchen window.
It’s a good approach to carbon capture :) grow and pile it up!
So this hotbed of liberalism -- high tech SV -- says "Merry Christmas"? What happened to the war on Xmas?

Happy Kwanzaa, Joyful Festivus, and may the winter solstice bring a great harvest!

The "war on Christmas" was always bullshit, a meme deliberately propagated by cultural conservatives to make other cultural conservatives feel threatened.

A very merry Feast of Isaac of Woolsthorpe to you.

It’s almost as if the war on Christmas isn’t really a policy of liberalism ;)

Most people eventually recognise that intent matters. Consider that the people you see who mock Christmas are probably a younger demographic realising for the first time that the date might be a little arbitrary - but that doesn’t mean the spirit of the holiday isn’t real.

What's with the downvotes? Just a bit of cheeky sarcasm
It doesn’t come across in the text - it just reads like bitterness at the popularity of the holiday.
Well I suck at text. Shoulda posted it as a tiktok.
Merry Christmas you beautiful soul
Cheers, happy holidays. I've learned a lot from this community this year & every year, and look forward to what 2023 well bring.