Likely for the fun and it might just save time when writing one off scripts or using the interpreter.

I nearly spit my drink out at the name, though.

Yes, it was just for fun.

Fun is the only thing that can justify this blasphemy :)

Why do this instead of:

   myvar = read_json_file_as_object('path/to/file')

??

Ok, you can argue that function would hit the hard drive many times when called from multiple modules (while imports would not), but this can be fixed with simple memoization.