I hate Xmas and all the stress, spending, and commercialism associated with it. I wish we could ban all the cheesy decorations, the "Big Sale!" flyers, the mine-is-bigger-than-yours shopping trips, the debt, the crowds, the energy-wasting light displays, the exchanging of gifts we don't want or need (another picture frame, how DID she know know I was down to my last two dozen simulated-gold-look picture frames?) with people we haven't seen in years and hardly care about.
I remember when Xmas was still Christmas...a present or two for the kids, a homemade family dinner, a day of walking in the woods or helping my grandfather fix up his property, visits to older relatives to help them finish those hard chores you need younger hands for, homemade cards with a handwritten note inside, ice skating on the pond...low key, low cost, and real.
Now we have something else...Xmas ... A race to see how quickly and how much we can buy, how much we can eat, how much we can drink, how hypocritical we can be, and how much conspicuous consumption we can cram into our lives over the course of those preceding two weeks.
Bah humbug. I can't wait for it to be over.
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Comments: 46
Christmas for me has become a guilt trip from family. All I hear is why don't I spend time traveling all over the country for them, with an expensive gift for all of them in tow?? I say, save your money. Buy your special someone a nice little sentimental something and spend the entire day eating a fabulous meal, drinking cocoa, playing in the snow(if there is any), or doing something that reconnects you with that person or persons.
I hate the commercials that have now started right after halloween. I hate feeling pushed into spending the very little money that I do have on people who would rather not get that gift that they may hate from me who they haven't seen in 7 months. I hate knowing that now that if I do actually need something from Target, like cleaning supplies, I will be bombarded with christmas crap that has nothing to do with "holiday spirit" or Jesus f****n Christ!!!!
P.S. LORA- Christ's birthday is NOT CHRISTMAS-DECEMBER 25TH IS AN OLD PAGAN HOLIDAY.
Tom Lehrer sang back in 1954 or so "Christmas Time is here, by golly. Disapproval would be folly. Deck the halls with hunks of holly. Fill the cup and don't say when."
Great song. Also has the lines "At Christmas time you can't get sore. Your fellow man you must adore. There's time to rob him all the more the other three hundred and sixty four."
We refuse to go in debt for Christmas. If we don't have the money we don't buy it. Shan and I have been making a special gift each year for family and friends. People wait in excitement to see just what creation will appear under the tree for them. One year we created leather hearts with silk ribbon and bells, another year we created jingle bells for doors, then there were birdhouses, and I can't even remember most of them until we go to visit and see them around our family's houses.
Try staying out of the stores and malls, and shut off the television. That tends to help. When you insulate yourself from commercialism, you will be surprised how quickly you get back to the reality of what is REALLY important.
I miss those times, and I know they are gone except done as a Nostalgic Theme, not a tradition anymore, year after year. It is sad that it is about the money, everywhere. And I dislike that Thanksgiving is barely here and they have started in the stores. I suppose some of that is because of the working population, and I know they need the time, it is just hard to give up the Old Christmas Way's because of survival. Ellen B
Christmas is in fact an old pagan holiday and was based mainly on the moon and calendar for hunting and planting purposes. It was part of the wheel of the year that begins on Shamain (hallow's eve)
In Cuba they celebrate on what is known here as little xmas on jan. 6, the day they believe the wise men actually arrived and gave Jesus presents.
I really hope everyone gets what the want for Christmas even if that is just peace and goodwill. That is my wish.
I had a yard sale this summer AND I SWEAR about half of it was gifts from the in-laws that I had no use or place for and couldn't re-gift (how tacky, De). What am I going to do with another heated potpourri dish? Another talking picture frame? Another fondue set? Another mini-crockpot? Give them all to Goodwill probably.
My in-laws are not well off and could certainly use the cash they spend for these gifts on something more important. I just can't get them to stop buying. If we don't participate, I hear about how stingy I am. I'm tempted to just donate to charity in their names each year until they get the hint. At least that way I can fall back on, "but its for a good cause. Don't you want to feed the starving children?"
I guess, it is what we make of it.
I do remember back in school, when we came back from the holidays, and it seemed so unfair. I was a military kid, away from extended family. There were five kids and a single income in our home, so Christmas had to be simple for our family. Anyway, when we came back to school, there always seemed to be a kid with two living sets of grandparents, eight aunts and uncles, and rich parents who all lavished packages in pretty paper on the only child who used the long lists of Christmas gifts to make me feel inferior because I got a single doll and stocking with fresh fruit.
I do get your disgust. I wish it wasn't so extreme. After all, we really don't like the gilded frames.
We do celebrate the birth of Jesus. I enjoy the lights on the tree and the music. My daughter or I usually cook a special meal.
Last year my husband flew to Pittsburgh Christmas night for our niece's funeral. She was in her last year of nursing school and left a 2 year old son behind. She never woke up from sleeping and died in the ER. She was 23 years old.
Enjoy your holiday and kiss and hug your loved ones for you don't know when they will leave you.
it's a sham, and a shadow of what it was supposed to be, and in the wrong time of year for that anyway. Pagan holiday hijacked.
Family is also important this time of year because during the year we are all so busy that this day we take the time to be together and catch up on everything. This year we also plan on taking some of the kids fishing and teaching them how to fish because this si so special for them.
As a Christian this time of year is important to me and my family without falling into the commercialism and material world or greed whatever way you want to look at it.
Blessings
All Christmas ever seems to be for me is an excuse for other people to extort things out of me that I honestly don't want to give them. Maybe if it was a night where we had a family dinner and spent time together, that'd be one thing...
Our family's all so distant, it really is just us and the kids. I struggled for a long time with the societal induced feeling of needing to give them more-more-more, which we could never afford and so Christmas brought on depression. Now it's about spending time together doing things we all enjoy. Fewer "things," more meaning. And as for the commercialization and marketing pressure... well, I don't have to buy into it, do I? I can see it's bs, shrug it off, and move to the beat of my own drummer. I'm grateful I don't have family pressure to buck as well.
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Coyotes Remember
As Dickens said, Christmas "is a time, of all others, when Want is keenly felt, and Abundance rejoices." It is a time that is pregnant with hope and the opportunity for redemption. Before we accuse others of missing that opportunity, we should make sure that we have seized it for ourselves.
I hear you on the kids not appreciating the presents. My aunt bought my nephew two pairs of expensive jeans last year that he sold for cigarettes! (She gave him the gift receipt, even.)