Comment by p-e-w

> is “how Git implements it” really the right way to explain it?

Of course not, and nowhere outside of software engineering will you find such widespread confusion between concepts and their implementation.

Do we think of pressing the gas pedal in a car as "accelerate", or as "regulate the intake manifold"?

Commits are one of the most high-level concepts in Git. If an explanation for them resorts to implementation details, it's a bad explanation.