So much of Christmas is about pretending. Pretending to like the ugly sweater your aunt gave you. Pretending that a carpenter who lived 2,000 years ago is the savior of man. And so on.
So to me, Bah Humbug means "c'mon, pretend with us." Fair enough. I have no problem with that. We all like to pretend. I believe, however, that you are only allotted so much pretending during the year. Go over your allotment and someone will call you delusional and throw you in the kook house. Given that allotment, I have to be careful about which things I pretend about, and when. I simply choose to allocate my fantasies to other things during other times of the year.
Yet someone who says Bah, Humbug doesn't mean simply "c'mon, pretend with us." The subtext is "you are threatening to introduce some reality into my fantasy, so stop it." I like that. I think it's funny. I also think it is justified, because who wants their fantasies mucked up by someone who doesn't buy into them?
The phrase Bah, Humbug is of course Dickensian from A Christmas Carol (a fine story). Although people today say it to someone they think is being Scrooge-like, in the story* it is Scrooge's catchphrase. These days, Scrooge has morphed into a character who is primarily about disliking Christmas. That's not a complete picture. Scrooge is a rich old man, ungenerous to a fault, who does not care about other people. One would have trouble imagining Scrooge making a charitable donation. (Of course, they didn't have tax deductions for charitable contributions back then.) These sorry traits come to a head around Christmas time in the novel, but he isn't just anti-Christmas. He's anti-social and a miserable human being. Or duck.
The Ghost of Christmas Future (technically the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come) is not showing Scrooge simply how unpleasant a future Christmas will be. In fact, the guests at the party are having a good time. The Ghost is showing him how others reflect on Scrooge's desolate life, arising from being miserly and shunning people who might otherwise care about you. That is the moral of the novel. He will be forgotten. Or worse, laughed at because "Old Scratch has got his own at last, hey?"
I'm not totally anti-Christmas; it's hard to hate something that people you care about seem to love. Nor am I any more anti-social than the rest of you. I'm not miserly (or rich, for that matter). And I'm not a miserable human being who doesn't care about other people. So, "Bah, Humbug" doesn't really apply to me!
I get your point, though. Christmas is about "cheer" in one way or another. As Dickens wrote in the frontispiece to A Christmas Carol: "My purpose was, in a whimsical kind of masque which the good humor of the season justified, to awaken some living and forbearing thoughts, never out of season in a Christian land." Theoretically, anyway.
I do think it is interesting that no one says Bah, Humbug to Jewish people -- at least not intentionally. There's a certain respect there. I'm curious why the same courtesy is not given to the anti-religious (or pantheists, which to me is the same thing).
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*Many people think "A Christmas Carol" is a novel, but it is far shorter than 100 pages and the character development is not typical of a novel. In fact, A Christmas Carol is just one of five Christmas stories that Dickens wrote. The others are "The Chimes," "The Cricket On the Hearth," "The Battle of Life" and "The Haunted Man." In some volumes they are together known as the "Christmas Books."
The Chimes is subtitled "A Goblin Story." The Cricket on the Hearth is subtitled "A Fairy Tale of Home." Maybe I'll read that one tonight. The Battle of Life is subtitled "A Love Story." And The Haunted Man has a subtitle that seems to continue the title: "And the Ghost's Bargain."
