holidays- christmas

Christmas seems to be like the biggest holiday within our culture. It's odd because we're supposed to be such a multicultural country, yet the most amped up holiday is one with a major religious aspect to it.
Within my family, Christmas day is usually spent in our pajamas. At some point we change to dress rather nicely for christmas dinner. When looking at this in terms of what it means in regards to living a meaningful life, it's showing us that appearance accounts for a lot. We start out the day being comfortable, spending time with close family members. But once it gets time to spend it with the rest of the family, we're supposed to change and put our best foot forward. It's odd because, since it's for our family, you would think we wouldn't need to "dress to impress". This is supposed to be the people who should love us no matter what, caring about us for who we really are. And yet, we still feel the need to make sure we look perfect, flawless even.
One of the most major and obvious aspects of the holiday, is the fact that it's all about consuming, and purchasing, for the sake of giving. As kids, we're immediately taught that the holiday is about presents, and getting what we want. Starting from an early age, we are taught to write letters to Santa Claus, listing everything we want that year. There's this sense of fear put into us by our parents, that if we weren't good enough all year, we won't get any of the things we want. It seems to all just be a major ploy to trick us into acting good. We are being taught that a major component of having a meaningful life, is being "good" and obeying the rules. In return, if we do good things, we will be rewarded. It's never simply "be good for the sake of being good". We aren't taught to feel any satisfaction from the good acts themselves. Instead we need to have this guarantee that we will be rewarded, in order to actually want to do anything good.
Another aspect of the holiday, as per most other holidays, is the big dinner we share with families. A major part of most holidays involves big meals. It shows us how we as a culture value meals a lot. We feel like somehow this brings us together, taking part in a huge meal together. It's one of the few really raw animal characteristics of our species we still consider really acceptable. It's something natural, one of the few things natural about this holiday.
Another huge component of the holiday is shopping for presents for others. It's a major consumer holiday. It teaches us to shop and that will somehow get us to this warm and fuzzy feeling of the holidays. It's teaching us that in order to live a meaningful life, we have to purchase the newest clothes or gadgets or toys. Then we will feel whole and satisfied with another year of our life being over.
It's strange because there's so much hype over this holiday. Commercials feature graphics of snowflakes, Google decorates it's web page with trees and snowmen, television stations play christmas movies where they pan across a house that's all lit up as friends and family laugh and eat inside next to a fireplace. And yet, the day finally comes, and I'm searching for this feeling of comfort and warmth and happiness and laughter and fireplaces, and it happens for maybe a moment as we first sit around the tree and begin opening presents, but after a few minutes, it feels like just another day. After all the presents have been opened and eggnogg has been drunken, we sit and watch tv as Grandma finishes cooking. It feels like any other day. I never feel that moment that the television portrays. It's as if this feeling has been entirely made up by all of those tv stations and websites and commercials. I look forward to it so much every year, and every year it ends the same. I get that feeling for a split second, and then suddenly its over.
I think this shows us that a meaningful life is all about looking for that feeling. Looking for that stimulation that comes with each different holiday. This one specifically being that happiness and that warmth. But does it even exist? Is that feeling even real? Because so far, I haven't found it.