Commercialism is a Holiday Tradition
Why Fight the Fun of Holiday Spending, Eating, and Celebrating?
Dec 22, 2008
Christmas just isn’t commercial enough. The date is an arbitrary day based on an event that could have occurred in July. The whole point of Christmas is getting things and that hasn’t changed since the pagan Winter Solstice. The true Christmas spirit is a time to celebrate earthly pleasures, to poison livers with Glug, to risk relationships with ill-advised mistletoe sightings, to flirt financial ruin strafing families with stuff, for children to make their greedy outrageous demands to a jovial gent dressed up in a nappy red snowsuit.
Lights, Presents, Action
It’s not as though modern Americans were brought up in log cabins, chewing suet for a holiday treat. Parents need to put up many flashing green and red Christmas lights, load up a Christmas tree, and pack space beneath with retail outlets. Kids routinely count the presents under the tree and compare the amounts with their previous year’s gross present income. Make no mistake about it, Christmas should be a frenzy of unmitigated greed, of gift paper ripping, present stacking, omnivorous consumption. That’s the way kids and adults like it.
The True Holiday Traditions
To truly celebrate Christ’s birthday, people follow His principles throughout the year, and there’s no need for Christmas-other than a time to accumulate a wad of gifts. This is true for other holidays as well. For Kwanza, the harvest is gathered, for Chanukah, the temple is rededicated, and the faithful just light a candle? No. According to the NFO World Group – a leading provider of research-based marketing -- no matter what the state of the economy, consumers spend between $200-$499 per person on overall holiday shopping. They bake rich desserts, chop down a tree, decorate it with trinkets and finally get all the technological gizmos, the books, the clothes and the jewelry they craved all year. Even Christ received the gifts of the Magi.
Reject the Ghosts of Christmas
Yes, the winter holidays not only require opening wallets for prospective lovers, as well as for family and friends, the seasonal hoopla also requires people to gush all over each other with warmth, physical affection, cards, good deeds and, baked goods. Even trying to get out of it runs the risk of getting out of it permanently. Remember Scrooge and the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come? Raising Christmas spirits should be fun. Throw a little money around, buy a big turkey, and lighten up at least once a year.
