While the weather isn’t all that cold outside, it is winter. All the trappings of the end of year preparations and celebrations are quickly becoming commonplace. Whatever your denomination, or prescription of faith, Christmas is just a fact of life in December. The familial festivities are inescapable even if you choose not to celebrate any holidays, for religious reasons or otherwise. No matter your feelings toward the holiday, one thing must be examined and critically resolved.
The “holiday season” has seemingly been absorbed by our materialistic nature and it is creating a new type of holiday.
A new “consumer coma” is quickly replacing what was once meant to symbolize goodwill and reciprocal peace. Those of you who deride the holidays altogether are not sanctioned from this new brand of yuletide joy.
We are all participating in, and perpetuating, this new form of decorating. Instead of adorning the mantle with handmade stocking, our goal is to hang our flat screens that were purchased at rock-bottom prices.
More important than reminiscing with family is the recitation of shopping lists that have now become the tinsel on our trees. The hot cocoa you are sipping with friends isn’t nearly as important as the picture you just posted to Instagram with your iPhone 6 of said cocoa.
What is worse, this replacement holiday is slipping in right under our noses, with barely a nod from our collective minds. And we are welcoming it.
Take a look at what transpired over the Thanksgiving holiday. Black Friday turned into sales on the feasting day itself. They weren’t even “Thanksgiving Sales,” but rather “Thursday at 5 p.m. sales.”
In order to alleviate our own guilt about shopping on a day that is supposed to be reserved for family, corporations have removed the holiday part of the equation altogether.
We all know the images of tents parked outside their favorite box store, like Wal-Mart or Best Buy. Some people camped out for weeks in advance of the cheap TV’s and electronics bundles.
Think of the absurdity of that situation. People are willing to neglect or forgo their family and responsibilities, granted probably in a team and taking shifts, for a TV. These prices are all contrived to begin with, if companies wanted to sell cheaper TV’s they could.
The fervor that is created with all this push for holiday deals and consumer-spending power is only feeding this “coma” that leads right up to Christmas. While we thinly veil our want for some new gadget in good cheer and holiday bunting, the machine of consumerism rolls right along.
Giving gifts of heart and hand are gratifying, that is understood. From now on, let us examine what those hands pick, and truly where the heart lies when compelled to charity.
Those who create luxury items and commodities in this world will always foster consumerism.
If this “consumer coma” continues however, the gifts of caring and goodwill are going to be much harder to muster, and the only entities that will foster their proliferation are you and I.