I don’t plan on telling my kids that there’s a Santa Claus.

I realize that it’s March, and so it may be strange to be reading something about Christmas, but Parade Day got me thinking about holidays.

In theory, holidays are a great idea. Marking a day down on one’s calendar to celebrate something significant affords a good opportunity for focused meditation. In a typical, busy life, people can’t and don’t devote large chunks of time to thinking about what they really appreciate. They can’t take time to make resolutions to be their best possible selves, or show their loved ones that they care.

Thanksgiving, New Year’s Eve and Valentine’s Day provide convenient opportunities to do so. And I’ll be the last one to claim that it’s a bad idea to cut loose, relax or celebrate. No kid should be deprived of the kind of experience that is waking up on Christmas morning. So yeah, holidays can be awesome. But there are aspects of the modern holiday experience that unsettle me.

Putting an official date on a holiday gives it a time frame, and giving it a time frame means that it can be missed. If the time when holidays were celebrated was a personal choice, coordinated with family and friends, perhaps, one would never lose the opportunity to ruminate over the significant issues that often anchors holidays. People do sometimes arrange their actual celebration to be at a more convenient time, but it’s a shame that it’s not always going to work out for everyone.

Of course, it is nice to have a day off from school or work. And there is something special about celebrating at the same time as everyone else.

My dad told me of a similar feeling he would get when watching the annual broadcast of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” as a kid, before VHS, knowing that everyone was watching at the same time. And some holidays need a simultaneous celebration to work; the bars wouldn’t be open so early on Parade Day if a flood of people wasn’t guaranteed, and if they weren’t packed and open it wouldn’t be any fun.

But there are worse consequences than just a few people missing out on an opportunity for contemplation and celebration. Parades are huge wastes of taxpayers’ money and hugely inconvenient to the people who are trying to use main roads. Plus, it is highly inconvenient to have so many businesses closed on the certain days because everyone needs to have that time off. People do have important things to do, even on holidays.

Commercialization leads to the even further separation of holidays from our personal lives. As they become less about meditation and celebrating with loved ones, holidays become more about buying the necessary accouterments. Do chocolates and flowers really say “I love you”?

As a holiday becomes tied to a certain time frame and moves away from being a more personal experience, commercialization can easily pervert it. When was the last time the Christmas season was relaxing for anyone? And then, before you know it, it’s March — time to start buying chocolate rabbits and Cadbury Eggs.

On a more personal note, I’m really uncomfortable with how holidays often involve filling the heads of children with supernatural nonsense. Christmas has Santa, Halloween has ghosts and Easter has the zombie messiah. I think lying to kids is a pretty disrespectful practice.

I’m in no way “against” holidays. There are good and bad aspects to them, and both should be acknowledged. And while I won’t be lying to my kids about Santa, that is not to say my family won’t be celebrating Christmas.