Introduction: From “Desolation” to “Taboo”

It is Christmas again. Currently, I am trying to imagine myself as an extraterrestrial observer aboard a near-Earth orbital vessel, coldly watching the twinkling lights across this continent through the viewport.

Looking back at my 2024 log A Reflection on Christmas 2024, the keywords I recorded were “Desolation” (or “Coldness”) and “Malice.” At that time, merchants were trembling under the chilling effect, while the group referred to as “⏰” was frantically searching for heresy.

In just one year, the spectrum of 2025 has undergone an interesting shift. If last year was “the silence of self-censorship,” this year has evolved into “the stress response of power” and “the popular backlash of jest.”

I. The Stress of Power: Physical Purge

The most prominent landscape this year is the authorities’ “physical purging” of Christmas elements.

In some cities, decorations in red and green are no longer merely an aesthetic issue; they have become a public security matter. The scenes of law enforcement officers dismantling Christmas trees at people’s homes are absurd, like a piece of postmodern drama. This excessive reaction to festive symbols precisely exposes the deep-seated fear of the ruling machine.

Raymond Aron once said that totalitarianism is a “secular religion.” When the “miracle” (economic growth) of this religion ceases to manifest, it begins to vehemently reject any other symbol that might offer spiritual solace. Dismantling a Christmas tree is essentially no different from the medieval destruction of pagan idols—it is a panic over the loss of spiritual territory.

Unlike the solemnity observed offline, the signal flow online is exceptionally active. I have observed a large number of non-Christians sending “Merry Christmas” to one another.

In the context of 2025, this greeting has shed its religious meaning, and even its purely festive meaning. It has become a code for identifying allies and enemies.

  • Saying “Merry Christmas” means: I am a person embracing modern civilization; I am a person weary of extreme nationalism; I am a person suffocated by grand narratives.
  • This is a low-cost, decentralized form of Passive Resistance. People are not celebrating the birth of Jesus; they are celebrating “right now, I do not submit to you.”

III. Attribution: The Threshold of Cognitive Dissonance

Why this change? As an observer, I see the correlation in the data.

The fierce plunge in economic data this year, coupled with the soaring rhetoric of propaganda, creates immense tension. A middle-aged person who is unemployed, a university student who delivers food—when they cannot even afford rent in reality, yet see “far ahead” displayed on a screen, Cognitive Dissonance occurs.

Pain is the best wake-up call. When the earthly paradise promised by the “Patriotic Religion” (Great Rejuvenation) turns into a mess, the believers naturally begin to defect. Mockery has become the only method of deconstruction. The more people feel ridiculed by “My Country is Awesome,” the more inclined they are to mock back using “overseas festivals” (or “foreign holidays”).

IV. Systemic Degeneration: From Faith to Tribunal

In sociological terms, this is a clear signal: Spiritual Control is degrading into Physical Control.

A “secular religion” in its prime relies on the fervent faith of its believers to maintain its operation. But when it begins to frequently employ police force and legal statutes to compel people to “respect the hero” or “celebrate foreign holidays,” it becomes corrupted. It transforms from a “Church” into a “Religious Tribunal.”

The higher the pillar of the tribunal’s stake, the more severe the dispersion of the populace’s hearts. The intervention of physical means is irrefutable proof of the exhaustion of spiritual control.

V. Regarding “⏰”: Samples in the Petri Dish

Finally, regarding those referred to as the “⏰” group.

Last year, I tried to isolate them by giving them a nickname. This year, I stand on the spaceship, observing them from a purely biological perspective. I have lost hatred, and I have lost empathy; there is only the calm of viewing through a microscope.

They are a specific colony within this massive petri dish. They are the inevitable product of a brain long immersed in a single source of information. Under the shock of economic decline, their anger, unable to find a true outlet, can only continue to attack the Christmas tree according to the programmed instructions they have been implanted with.

They are not my enemies; they are merely the defective products of the old era’s spiritual control, and also the destined sacrifices in this grand historical transformation. I observe their agitation as one observes the panic of an ant colony before a storm arrives.