I'm watching the Christmas commercials with a jaundiced eye.
All of the diamond commercials, the "no interest" credit card deals if you pay within 18 months, the Black Friday predictions. I don't know if it's just me. Is it because we are empty-nesters? Is it because we are budget-conscious? Is it because so many people we know are struggling helplessly in this deep, deep recession?
Would it hurt to take a break from Christmas for just one year?
We're not even getting a tree this year. For the first time in my life, from dreamy New England Christmases growing up, then celebrating the season raising my son, I will not partake in the Christmas rituals that have defined every December of my life for 50 years. There will be no gift buying, no mailing out of Christmas cards. I won't be decorating a tree with old and new ornaments. In fact, I watch the endless frantic commercials trying to sell me the old Christmas idea that I must buy many gifts and it seems foreign, odd even. Like an obsolete idea struggling not to die.
This year is all Jimmy Stewart and It's a Wonderful Life. In a weird way. Yes the banks all crashed but then got resucitated by the Government and they and the credit cards companies learned nothing, continuing to treat the American public nastily and with entitlement. The retail establishment will not be able to absorb this years losses and come January, there will be a lot of bankruptcies and closing of stores around the country. Retail depends on Christmas spending to keep it in the black for the rest of the year.
We're out of money. The American Government. The American citizen. There is no money for diamonds or gadgets or cars or ipads. This Christmas will be about friends and family, a quiet event marked with faith and reflection, no ostentatious frivolity. It's a Christmas ritual famine, one we need to go through to come out the other side and see where we end up.
My grandparents celebrated Christmas rummaging through stockings for oranges and candies. Warm chestnuts, hot cider. My own parents had frugal Christmases under the stern eye of a generation who had weathered the Great Depression. Christmas was about family and a church service and the singing of carols. But in a mere 50 years in America it has turned into an insatiable, mawkish display of materialism. We won't even have Christmas lights this year, no feast, just a Christmas fast. Gorging ourselves and opening countless gifts rings hollow to me.
The Christmas fast is for our soldiers, the foreclosed upon, the unemployed, the broke. These frantic commercials are obsolete; urging us to buy, buy, buy to a citizenry who can't pay the bill come January.
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Harrison Price
ladyfarmerjed
Ande Bliss
Lauren J Barnhart
suzie
marytkelly
Salon.com
Comments
(R)
I think the reality is quite different. The American 'consumer' is now stimulated by the stack of bills overdue from previous spending.
This post is spot on here. I am glad to know there are more out there than me who reflect on complete insanity when it comes to traditions.
I hope this next storm goes easy on you.
My son will be in Basic Training at Lackland AFB for Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years. He is there right now.
The commercialism is a new corruption of an old celebration where the "mass" was formerly front and center. "Merry Christmas" meant "have a great time in church". This is not obsolete either to untold millions.
Somehow we have taken all the lyrics of all the modern songs to mean we all deserve, plum puddings, mommy kissing Santa, packages under the tree, a white Christmas, and being home, at least in our dreams. None of those were part of the original contract. With all due respect I disagree, Christmas is not obsolete, it's more relevant than ever. It's the injected corruptions of the original concept that are no longer necessary, and not before time either.
otherwise...I plan to get out to see as many choirs and concerts as possible.
I have a vintage ceramic plug in tree that my mother gave me - that's easy.
She died Dec. 15th. Her birthday was Dec. 24th. Sigh.
I worked retail through 3 Xmas seasons (which I write about in my new book), and beginning Black Friday would watch -- with growing nausea -- a frenzy that was truly bizarre to buybuybuybuy and an emotional insanity attached to that buying. People would practically tear out heads off, or burst into tears of frustration, obsessed with trying to find "the perfect gift". Hah! I was amused (not) by parents who had NO IDEA what their own children might even want or enjoy.
It is sad indeed. I will be sending out cards, which I love and enjoy. As for gifts...my mother is in the hospital far away (it just cost $70 to Fed Ex a gift worth half that, to avoid loss or customs BS) and it's just me and my partner. We are fortunate to have what we need, so it won't be crazy. We have each other. That's my best gift.
Don't let Bill O'Reilly read this, he'll say you're taking the Christ out of Christmas.
Embrace the simplicity and celebrate the simple pleasures of whatever family and friends gather around a table, and the food they prepare, be it simple or spectacular.
Great post, Deborah.
And The Whos down in Who-ville burst into song...
Wonderful post. Rated.
I am blessed to have a job, to have weathered this recession (so far) very well. But I don't need a single blessed thing. Except maybe a dumpster. And a yard sale. I'm in a purging mood... old papers, clothes, stuff, junk, the things that fill up a big suburban house in every odd closet and corner... a lifetime of Christmas presents from well-meaning people who had to give me something because I was on their list. The people that I do give presents to get experiences, not things. Tickets to plays, movies, dinners, ice skating. No more objects.
I'm fed up with Rama Lama Ding Dong or whatever a handful of people claim they celebrate which has screwed up our perception of these holidays anyway. I have several friends who never celebrated Christmas and have all told me they were never upset at being wished "Merry Christmas", since they were intelligent enough to understand that the people extending the wishes meant to convey positive thoughts and good wishes (in a world that can sure use them) and were not trying to offend everyone they come into contact with.
Having said that, I'll wish everyone a Merry Christmas, regardless of your stance on gift giving.
It's time to make being politically correct incorrect.
Miss Boo is our gift this year. :) We've always kept the holidays simple. I too am sick of the "buy this" mentality that has diluted what its really about.
This year, we're just going to curl up by the fireplace with Boo and be thankful.
-R-
Xmas will be provided by social services this year for my daughter; last year a kind local family adopted her and that went far. Since she's 8, we try to protect her from the economic hardships and Xmas seems to feel the same to her as it was never too material anyway. More about what we can do together - always the focus on experience. This year will be the same.
Much love to you and yours.
Here's wishing you a happy Christmas/Saturnalia/Kwanzaa/Winter Solstice.
The Great American Retailer doesn't seem to understand; to buy the goods, to take part in a capitalist Xmas, the consumer needs one crucial bit they appear to have forgotten; a job.
Wonderful though it is I'm sure to ship all those nice paying jobs abroad to India and China, the policy does come at a price; introduce too many potential consumers to the dole queues, and even worse, introduce too many to the fear of job loss at any moment (like in the New Year) and the chances of persuading the public to buy! buy! buy! like they do most years diminishes.
And yet the same firms, whose VP's moan that the American public just aren't buying this year, will in the next sentence ship another department to India, close down another midwest factory for replacement in China.
This was never what globalization was about; the idea was to increase markets, introduce western-style consumerism to other nations. Instead the globalists have simply run-down western economies by exporting jobs and making the fear of job-loss the primary concern. Now the chickens are coming home to roost and this year will be the first of many and an indicator of how things will be in the future; run-down, crazed-shopping-free...and probably better for all of us in the long term.
The globalists killed the golden goose, but this Xmas will be a genuine time for families, for laughter and tears, and not the mad consumer dash it has been. Those days are gone.
Many of us despise Christmas for a multitude of reasons, yet the profit making, greed and waste go one. Bah Humbug!
Well done on the EP - well deserved.
R
And congrats on the well-deserved EP!
Therefore, I send you this Christmas Greeting and, other than presents for a grandson, nephew and a niece, and a little bit of money sent to my children (who need it more than me), this will be a no-celebration Christmas for me too.
I also read your story about the neurologist running out on you and your husband, leaving him in unbelievable pain. Whatever was the conclusion of that story? Did the hospital assign another neurologist? Was something done regarding the callous attitude of this woman?
I read a few of your stories including this one, which touches upon my own mood this year as well as some Christmas Holidays in the past.