Joy, peace on earth, and good will to all men: Christmas is supposed to be a Christian festival. But what might it mean after the death of God?
In this special end-of-year episode of The Will to Joy, we explore Nietzsche’s surprising relationship with Christmas — from his childhood enchantment with the festive season, through intimate Christmases with the Wagners, to his darkest and loneliest winters marked by estrangement, illness, and radical self-overcoming.
Drawing on Nietzsche’s letters, notebooks, and major works (The Gay Science, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Beyond Good and Evil), this episode asks what remains of joy, peace, and generosity once Christian metaphysics has collapsed. Why did Nietzsche continue to value festivals? What role do communal celebrations play in culture after God’s death? And why did he believe that joy needs no justification?
We examine Christmas through a Nietzschean lens: Dionysian ecstasy and deindividuation, war and repose, otium and overwork, generosity without phoney morality, and joy as the unmistakable signal of life ascending. Along the way, we confront Nietzsche’s critiques of peace, pity, altruism, and slave morality — and recover a harder, more honest, more life-affirming vision of cheerfulness as overflow rather than consolation.
The episode concludes with a Nietzschean Christmas tale that touches on the role and function of celebration in human culture.
A Christmas episode for atheists, skeptics, and anyone interested in joy without illusion, generosity without guilt, and affirmation without God.
Raise a cup of good cheer — and prepare for a New Year of self-overcoming.
Music recommendations:
It's a Big Country by Davitt Sigerson
Other music credits: Nacht Silent - Vienna Boys Choir
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Here's a Spotify playlist of the tracks I recommend in series 1 of the Will to Joy podcast in the order I recommend them. Each invokes some variety of Dionysian feeling for me. I hope they can do something similar for you:
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