comment: >
context: This is a friendly reminder to read our rules.
  Remember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not "thoughts had in the shower!"
  (For an explanation of what a "showerthought" is, please read this page.)
  Rule-breaking posts may result in bans. >
  
  This is weird because I literally just learnt what a cargo cult is earlier today from a YouTube video. >
  
  Baader meinhof >
  
  This is weird because I literally just learnt what baader meinhof is earlier today from a YouTube video. >
  
  Then you'd be interested in the Baader meinhof effect. >
  
  This is weird cuz I just learned what the baader mienhof effect was from this Reddit comment.... >
  
  Zipf’s law? >
  
  That’s weird because I literally just learned what ZipF’s law was from google… >
  
  I heard Santa was in a cult. I forget where. >
  
  You guys remember stuff?? >
  
  It's not technically a cargo cult, at least how I understand the meaning, because the rituals aren't a backwards representation of cause and effect. Like if kids thought carving a second chimney would attract more presents, that would be a cargo cult. >
  
  I think there’s definitely cause and effect- for example, writing the letter to Santa and leaving out a stocking both increase the chances of desirable gifts. Even leaving out a cookie for Santa and carrot for the reindeer might be a way to curry favour. >
  
  Yeah but those rituals are tangential, not backwards. "Cargo culting" is when you attempt to blindly recreate some legitimate part of the process thinking that that will achieve the desired results. The rituals that kids employ aren't a blind recreation of some part of the "actual" process of how Santa (or their mom/dad) brings presents. >
  
  We spend government money every year so NORAD can display a fake location of Santa Claus and kids can track how long it will be until they get their presents. >
  
  Honestly the weirder thing about Santa is that he has a way to break into anyone's home and everyone's just ok with that.
  Like even if you don't live in a house with a chimney that fat fuck still has a way in. >
  
  He's a Reverse Burgler. >
  
  If this resonates with you, you should listen to Margaret Killjoy's latest series on her podcast, "Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff" 
  The episodes are titled "Keep the Yuletide Gay: Saturnalia & the Puritan War on Christmas"
  It goes into this and also a bunch of other stuff about Christmas that's super interesting. >
  
  Christmas used to have employees etc go to the employers house and ask for food and gifts, some times not in a nice way. It was getting more and more aggressive as a tradition, until some high up people in America decided to start changing that tradition and make it into something else. Now it has completed its transformation from the poor getting from the rich into all the poor and rich buying stuff for their families and friends. Most everyone has forgotten or rather never learnt what used to happen on Christmas before Charles Dickens revived and reinvented how Christmas was celebrated. >
  
  Fun fact: Almost no-one in England had heard of Santa when Dickens was writing (he arrived as an American custom from the 1860s). Before Santa the English had “Father Christmas”, who didn’t bring gifts and symbolized the arrival of the spring. >
  
  I've prepared the ritual sacrifice of electricity in the hopes that I'll be blessed with a new television! >
  
  Santa is one of the biggest users of slave labour out there.
  Next to the American prison labour supply system of course. 800,000 workers ready and able to do labour for your corporation for only pennies per hour. >
  
  Whoa, let me down easy, bro. Brb after I burn all the Christmas presents in effigy. >
  
  It’s a pagan holiday and Big Business has made it a day about buying crap and somehow celebrating a mythical zombies birthday
  The Christians banned Christmas back in the day.. now it’s all about them.. hypocrites lol >
  
  Religion in general is a cargo cult, if you think about it. Hordes of people banding together building shrines, representations and stories and performing all sorts of rituals hoping to fall in the good graces of some alleged higher being that most likely doesn’t give a shit about them, if it even exists