Episode 17 - The War On Christmas   In 2005 a War On Christmas resurfaced, and took the News Media by storm. Seemingly driven by political correctness, or the frustration thereof, many have drawn political lines seeing the omission of the term “Christmas” in holiday greetings as an assault on the conservative Christian aspects of this holiday season, while other observances, such as Hanukkah and Kwanza are apparently left unscathed. While Christmas, as most of us would recognize it, is a rather modern rendition, the evolution of the Christmas holiday and, in fact the festive observance of the winter season entirely, goes back millenia. Theories abound about the specific religious underpinnings of Christmas, as well as origins of many traditions and iconography of the season. And history shows us that Christmas has been under attack for a long time. In fact, Christmas as we know it, may very well be a conspired invention itself to replace the untamed observance that preceded it. Ultimately, we celebrate Christmas and the holiday season as we, individually have always observed it, and we do find any attempt to change our perspective extremely upsetting. Well, there seems to be some psychology behind Christmas that might just explain it. www.conspiracytheoryology.com email - [email protected] Twitter - @TheoryologyPod Facebook - @TheoryologyPodcast Patreon - www.patreon.com/conspiracytheoryology Music is by adamhenrygarcia.bandcamp.com Links: https://www.libertarianism.org/media/liberty-chronicles/christmas-conspiracy https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/War_on_Christmas https://medium.com/crobox/the-psychology-of-christmas-a3fbccd93197 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_controversies https://skeptoid.com/blog/2013/12/19/when-did-christmas-become-so-commercial/ https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/19/us/war-on-christmas-controversy.html https://www.influenceatwork.com/dr-robert-cialdini-on-the-principle-of-reciprocity/ http://science.sciencemag.org/content/319/5870/1687 https://www.jstor.org/stable/1251931?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0148296304002000?via%3Dihub https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/ulterior-motives/201311/what-does-nostalgia-do http://www.directcreative.com/influence-and-persuasion-the-rule-of-consistency.html http://www.emotionlab.se/mechanisms-of-social-avoidance-learning-can-explain-the-emergence-of-adaptive-and-arbitrary-behavioral-traditions-in-humans-3/ https://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/15/opinion/the-puritan-war-on-christmas.html https://erenow.com/common/the-battle-for-christmas/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby,_It%27s_Cold_Outside http://www.apuritansmind.com/puritan-worship/christmas-and-the-regulative-principle/once-upon-a-time-when-christmas-was-banned-by-c-danko/