WWKMD?, Episode 8: Rousseau's Christmas: When Festivity Becomes Performance

Jean‑Jacques Rousseau, writing before industrial capitalism, offers a moral diagnosis of how society can turn Christmas from genuine togetherness into ritualized performance. Through his idea of amour‑propre—self‑love born of comparison—he shows how gift‑giving, display, and social expectation make the season competitive, anxious, and unequal.

Rousseau doesn’t condemn the desire for warmth and generosity, but he warns that compelled feeling, staged harmony, and dependence distort those values. His remedy is simple: strip away spectacle and obligation to recover quieter, more sincere forms of connection.