I woke up this morning after a remarkably good night's sleep. The family - both sides - was over for Christmas Dinner last night. The house was a bit of a disaster, and I had gone to bed without cleaning up much.
This morning I woke to the mess in the kitchen - the dirty dishes, the coffee cups, the wine glasses. There was wrapping paper everywhere, leftover party favourites from the Christmas crackers, dirty napkins All of it went into the garbage. And now we have a very large bag of junk that will be sent to a landfill. That junk must be generated at almost every house in North America. That's a lot of cheap Chinese crap going directly from the dining room to the dump.
And it got me to thinking...
People have ranted about the "commercialization of Christmas" for the past fifty years - I watched "A Charlie Brown Christmas" from 1965 and Charlie Brown laments about it. But things haven't changed much. We still buy things we don't need. We still have an expectation that we should get a commensurate amount of stuff based loosely on how much we give. Folks like me say "I don't want anything" but would be disappointed Christmas morning if that was an actually reality.
So I hope I read this a year from now, and I hope that I've moved closer to this ideal.
We should give nothing except cheer and fellowship and good wishes. Maybe splurge on a meal - just to reinforce that we are rich.
What would it feel like to really have to suffer in order to give someone a gift. I don't know. And if you're reading this, I doubt you do either (you're reading this on a computer of some sort - so you're rich). How about this: we all agree that we forego Christmas stockings and presents under the tree, and make the holiday more like Thanksgiving. Be thankful that we're all winners in the gene-pool of life. We were born in North America. We speak English. Most of us are white anglo saxons. Do we have to flaunt it?
It has to stop some-place. How about next year?
2 comments:
I have a thought: If we can't avoid giving a gift, make it ART of some kind ... a book, some music, a movie, a painting. Just don't go and buy it at a store if it involves something physical (bits are OK). If you have to buy stuff to make stuff - don't.
With entire family buy-in,we moved to "presents for grandchildren only" a year ago. We also have a "no toys, just books or board games". Only exception this year is that I made KIVA gifts to our children & spouses to encourage them to give effectively to others. If anyone not familiar with KIVA go to kiva.com and be amazed.
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