It's no secret to anyone who knows me that the upcoming holiday season is quite possibly my least favorite time of year. Whenever I mention this, without fail, I get derided as a Grinch, a Scrooge, or at the very least a generally joyless person. Yet I would be more likely to welcome and enjoy this part of the year were it not for the fact that Christmas, and the months surrounding it, have been turned into an unending festival of greed. Christmas has become the most wonderful time of year only for companies looking, as always, to turn the holidays into one last occasion for the year to take our money and have us thank them for it.
This is an old complaint, certainly. Famously Charles Schulz had Charlie Brown ask, "Isn't there anyone who knows what Christmas is all about?" back in 1965. He too, nearly fifty years ago, was disheartened by the commercialization of the season. The answer he got, of course, was the religious meaning of the season for practicing Christians, but one needn't believe in Jesus to be disgusted by the materialism evident at this time of year, a tradition that has only gotten worse since then.
I feel your angst, Chuck
Even those who profess no religion wax poetic about the joys of this time of year, from time spent with family, to being thankful for what we have, and marking the winter solstice, when the days finally start to get a little bit lighter. But all of that is lost in the maelstrom of greed, the greed of corporations who continue to start advertising a little bit earlier each year, with a hail of ads designed alternately to entice, cajole or outright guilt us into purchasing baubles we don't need and didn't know we wanted until we saw the ads. It's the greed of people trampling each other on Black Friday to get a good deal on a new Playstation or tv set. After seeing people literally run over their fellow man, it is hard take seriously any talk about the joys of goodwill to all mankind at this time of year.
Greed and materialism, always a dismal part of our culture, are what really come to the fore at this time of year. Companies now routinely start Christmas advertisements before Halloween. Black Friday now starts on Thanksgiving and continues on through Cyber Monday. Each year we are increasingly pressured to buy more and more presents for our loved ones, with the implication that love is only valid when it is demonstrated through gifts, preferably ones from the big box stores that convey these kinds of messages in the first place.
The more we buy, the more they want us to buy, and even as some of us complain about the materialism of the season, about how Christmas ads never used to start until at least Thanksgiving, we reward companies for behavior we deride by continuing to buy. It has to stop. Make no mistake; there is nothing wrong with buying gifts for people you care about, but there has to be a limit. If the only meaning of the holidays is an occasion for exchanging gifts, then it truly has lost any meaning it might once have had, religious or otherwise.
If you are as disgusted with what this season has become as I am, then do something about it. Opt to buy less this year, not more. Give to a local charity in lieu of presents--an especially meaningful action as many charities are struggling in a down economy to take in enough revenue to keep operating. Craft your own gifts for close family, or purchase from artists and local businesses instead of buying from Amazon, Walmart, or other big companies. If this season is ever to become less commercial rather than more, the change has to start with us.
That's capitalism though, isn't it? Create a need for something that previously didn't exist? We just hope that new "need" actually turns out to be useful, but it often doesn't.
ReplyDelete