Let's Discuss... Public celebrations!

The Examined Life, "Let's Discuss..." session is an open discussion.
The topic for this event is ''Public celebrations''.

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In Christmas films, we hear "Christmas is about families", "Christmas is about bringing us together" and slogans like that. But do we need celebrations like that?

In the book The Righteous Mind (chapter 10) by Jonathan Haidt. The author talks about why we bind as collectives and I have found this an interesting quote (of a quote): Ehrenreich... Dancing in the Streets... She notes that ecstatic dancing is an evolved biotechnology for dissolvinghierarchy and bonding people to each other as a community. Ecstatic dancing, festivals, and carnivals invariably erase or invert the hierarchies of everyday life. Men dress as women, peasants pretend to be nobles, and leaders can be safely mocked. When it’s all over and people have returned to their normal social stations, those stations are a bit less rigid, and the connections among people in different stations are a bit warmer.

What is the purpose of public celebrations (like Easter or Nowruz)?
why did we let our celebrations get highjacked by companies and advertising?
Can we declare public celebrations a commercial enterprise or are we missing something by letting it get there?
Are celebrations losing their initial purposes?
As a nation do we have to have unifying public celebrations?

Please ask the questions you wish to discuss related to this topic in the comment section.
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*** The format of this event will be:

For this event, I could only book for 2 hours but we should be able to stay till closing time.

14:00 - Free flow group discussion.
15:00 - Splitting to smaller groups for more engaging discretion.
17:00 - End of the official meetup. Attendees can stay and continue discussing if they wish.

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If you haven't read the The Examined Life rules (or need a refresher), which can be found here, please do so before the meetup:

https://www.meetup.com/The_Examined_Life/messages/boards/

Please RSVP if you can commit to attending and change your RSVP if something comes up. Inaccurate RSVPs can make it difficult to plan for room sizes and bookings.

cover photo: unknown name and artist. (Potentially) Yaldā night celebration.