45%

One North American survey reported that 45% of respondents dreaded the festive season.

Why?

1. excessive commercialization of Christmas, with the focus on gifts and the emphasis on "perfect" social activities.
2. Christmas appears to be a trigger to engage in excessive self-reflection and rumination about the inadequacies of life (and a "victim" mentality) in comparison with other people who seem to have more and do more. 
3. pressure (both commercial and self-induced) to spend a lot of money on gifts and incur increasing debt.
4. expectations for social gatherings with family, friends and acquaintances that they'd rather not spend time with.
5. many people feel very lonely at Christmas, because they have suffered the loss of loved ones or their jobs.

No wonder more than 30 million Americans are taking antidepressants. And spending more than 600 billion dollars this Christmas season.  (greater than the entire GDP of Sweden)

What should you do if you’re depressed at Christmas? Watch The Muppet Christmas Carol or read Dickens Christmas Carol 

Read more on depression during the holidays at: Psychology Today

85 percent of all artificial Christmas trees are now made in China, and there is a rumor that Santa and his elves are considering a permanent move to the Chinese city of Shenzhen.

Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dog-days; and didn't thaw it one degree at Christmas.

A Christmas Carol

I have endeavoured in this Ghostly little book, to raise the Ghost of an Idea, which shall not put my readers out of humour with themselves, with each other, with the season, or with me. May it haunt their houses pleasantly, and no one wish to lay it.

Their faithful Friend and Servant, C.D. , December, 1843.