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The observance of great secular and religious festivals is in general marked by the individual's gratification of infantile wishes which are normally held in check by feelings of guilt. A festival is a social sanction to forms of enjoyment which at other times must be held to a judicious minimum.
The type of celebration that characterizes a festival has only a formal relationship to the generic meaning of the holiday. While legend and ritual lend the trappings, individuals react according to the peculiarities of their temperaments. Some merely indulge in immoderate eating and drinking; others look forward to unbridling their ordinarily monotonous sexual lives; exhibitionistic persons use a holiday as a pretext for jumping onto the stage; still others, according to their lights.
The converse of this type of reaction is to be seen in those persons who are unable to make the most of a celebration, must always suffer, must never for any reason discard their sackcloth. Here too, however, there is nothing specific in any particular festival which invites the negative reaction but rather the very idea of having enjoyment.1
Of all festivals, that marking the Christmas and New Year season is characterized by the greatest relaxation on the part of the superego of society, so to speak. This is the season when governments grant amnesties and penal institutions distribute pardons. It is the season when the solid citizen becomes liquid and 'the devil is raised'. When it is all over, repression resumes and the air is disinfected with good resolutions.
Instances in two persons of specifically negative reactions to the Christmas festival are recorded.