Seems like every year the Christmas rush starts earlier and earlier. I think I know why. The following is my theory. Back in the 1940’s and 1950’s there were a tremendous amount of people being born due to military men returning from the war. Many people in that time had it very tough financially. The children of the 1960’s and 1970’s, as a result, did not benefit materialistically. Money was short. When those children of the baby boomers began having children, they made it a point to make sure that their children would not want for anything. Another part of the theory is that because both boomer parents usually had to work to make ends meet, then new generation of parents (gen x) felt they had to buy their children things to make up for the lack of parenting their own parents gave them. Christmas gifts began to get more and more expensive and elaborate as a result. The economic boom created from this made the retail outlets start to get earlier and earlier in order to maximize their sales potential. Thus the Christmas season starting in October, before Halloween by the way, has become the norm and the true meaning of Christmas has fallen by the wayside. I think that this year, and subsequent years, I will make it a point to not spend money at Christmas. Not because I am cheap, but because I think that the real reason for the season needs to be revived. If you are a Christian, then the birth of Jesus and the symbolic gifts of the magi should be nothing more than that—symbolic. If you are Pagan, then the season of Yule is supposed to be a celebratory feast that symbolized a successful harvest and the rebirth of the year. The gifts given were to be nothing more than a token of the past years prosperity and symbolic in nature. Yet here we are. All of us poised to spend on average a full 2 weeks’ salary on useless, non-appreciated, trivial trinkets this year. This madness needs to stop but i fear that we as a world culture, have made it a necessary vital part of our economy’s that if it were to stop, the world depression that we are currently in, would necessarily dip again. So we are at an impasse. We either continue the deprecation of the meaning of Christmas or we plunge deeper into our worldwide depression. It really is a no win situation. So perhaps, a compromise is in order. I propose that we not set ourselves into debt to buy things that will go unappreciated, but rather make it a point to purchase things that we (they) need and present them as trivial token symbols of our good fortune, as they were intended to be. We should spend time with our families and revive the meaning of Christmas.
As a side note, I was one of those children of the 1960’s-1970’s that was mentioned earlier. I cannot remember a time that my parents did not try to do their best to ensure that we had something to open on Christmas day. I can honestly say that my parents did not fall into the whole buying useless things trap. We, as children, did not always get everything we wanted, but we had what we needed. As a parent, I do not generally fall into that same trap of spending myself into debt to make my kids happy, though they do get a gift card from me every year. I practice token giving rather than materialistic giving. You see, I have not forgotten that the holiday is not about how much I can spend, but rather how much love there is in my heart. Perhaps, everyone reading this blog can do the same thing.
Happy Hanukkah, Merry Christmas, Happy Christmas, Happy Yule, Merry Yule, Happy Kwanzaa.
May your cup never be empty and you heart always be full.
1 comment:
I totally agree with you on that Christopher, we have forgotten what it originally meant and turned it into something that it was never meant to be. Alas, as you have said it is a lose, lose situation and so we need to compromise.
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