Christmas Letdown

We had a really nice and manageable Christmas, and I think the kids really enjoyed it, though R and I noticed something that we’ve seen in the past. The kids get really excited (understandably) about opening their presents, but at some point it becomes a feeding frenzy, and then it becomes less about what they get and more about how much.

It’s crazy to watch, and you see it plain as day when you go to birthday parties or other events where presents are involved. Kids just go into zombie mode and start ripping open packages without much thought as to what is inside. It’s sort of disturbing, and definitely feeds into that consumer mentality of wanting more, more, more! We are creating the future generations of American consumers.

Worst of all is the letdown, or crash. After all is said and done, and there are no more presents, the kids get crabby and wonder when the next holiday is, or better yet, attack mom and dad to release some angst. We're seeing this in action in this pic. It’s not good, and I can see why people go out and buy all sorts of junk for their kids and for that matter, themselves. The process feeds on itself, and seems, at least for adults, to be a short term fix for an overall dissatisfaction with one’s life. This does not apply to kids, they’re too young to know about disillusionment, but give them time. Adults, on the other hand, can sometimes use shopping as therapy, which can lead to disaster.

I’m sure marketers count on it to fuel the economy, buy this and it’ll make you happy, at least for a few hours, after which you’ll want to buy more. You see it in action with people who have so much stuff, it never ends. I’ve fallen prey to it, but you really begin to understand that constantly buying things is not a solution to finding contentment in life. If anything, it makes you feel even more crappy because not only do you go broke, but often you end up in debt and thus a slave to your job, which more likely than not, you hate.

I realize this sort of subversive thinking flies in the face of the message that we are told in our every waking minute, which is to buy more stuff. It’s the very principal on which places like Wally World thrive, and I see it a lot in young people (listen to me, I’m getting old) who work minimum wage jobs and blow all their cash on expensive cell phones or finance fancy new cars. I kind of gets me depressed to see it in actionl

I prefer the New England approach, or at least for some New Englanders, frugal and self-sufficient. The frugal part (dare I say cheap) I’m familiar with, it’s the self-sufficient part that I’m working on. I hope to have a handle on it sometime in the next century.

I hate to sound like a Scrooge, I love Christmas and who doesn’t love the thrill on the kids faces when they see the gifts under the tree, but I wonder sometimes if we’re doing our kids a disservice by promoting the importance of stuff all the time, and would be better off sending them a different message. Also, it encourages this concept of putting your life on hold for one big day, after which life seems to come to an abrupt halt, which is sort of drag.

We used to have a neighbor who had great kids, and she approached the holidays in an interesting and unique way. Every Christmas, each child would get one present, and they would take a big family trip somewhere, maybe even do some sort of volunteer work in another country.

Our kids would probably hate us, and would grow up and remember us as the weird parents who didn’t celebrate Christmas like normal families, but when you look around at the current state of the world, where we model our lives after TV shows and celebrities are our role models, where we spend all of our free time talking about last night’s episode of American Idol and how “other” people live their lives instead of living it ourselves, is normal really the way to go?

I’ll have to get back to you on that one. Until then, thanks for reading.