The Nightmare that is Christmas
Date Posted: Sunday, November 18, 2007Author: Eleanor White
Lifestyle
Latest Articles:
- China quake: 19,000 buried in rubble, 13,000 dead
- After big win, Clinton vows to push forward
- Raising the standard of childcare
- The changes needed in our education system
- God’s word is a mirror
- Saving energy, saving the environment
- The importance of training our children
- Bermuda’s bike laws - don’t punish responsible riders
- Conscription and the young black male
- Parenting: why court isn’t the answer
Search International News:
We're not yet out of November and I'm already wishing Christmas was over. The incessant and inane Christmas music, nauseating window displays and spend, spend, spend mentality that has me reaching for my credit card only to regret it later.
Type in 'Christmas debt' into any Internet search engine and you'll be presented with some alarming facts and figures about Christmas spending. In the US, the Christmas period accounts for an astounding
25 per cent of annual retail sales. In Britain, the average shopper claims they will overspend by £147 ie almost $300 this year while millions of shoppers are still paying off their credit card bills from last year. And it's not just presents, I've seen people wheeling not one but two overladen shopping trolleys of food around the supermarket and what about all the decorations? These days it isn't enough to put up a tree and a couple of garlands. People are spending hundreds, sometimes thousands of dollars, on decorations to turn the outside of their homes into bad taste Santa's grottoes.
Complaints of commercialism at Christmas aren't new. The Puritans passed rules curbing the Christmas excesses of the early colonists.
But in a society so beset with problems it seems to me that we should be reflecting more and spending less. I'm not particularly religious – two or three trips to church a year at most – but you don't have to be religious to embrace the Christmas message.
It may be a cliché but what about the people in less fortunate circumstances – the homeless or the hungry? Instead of rushing out and buying that hundredweight of cheese you'll never eat or the handmade baubles that cost a week's salary, why not make a donation to charity?
Christmas these days seems to be an excuse for excess – eating and drinking far too much, having indiscretions at the office Christmas party and racking up enormous bills. So why do we do it? Perhaps it's a way of letting off steam after a hard year at work. There may even be an element of competition to it. If my neighbour has a five ft Christmas tree then I can prove my superiority by buying a 6ft one.
And of course there's the pressure. Stores use every trick in the book to lure you in and buy their Christmas wares. Open any magazine and it's full of articles on Christmas shopping, Christmas party outfits, Christmas recipes. And there's the kids.
One of my mother's favourite phrases is: "Christmas is for the kids"
and it usually precedes a shopping frenzy in which she buys bagfuls of the latest toys which her grandchildren have told her they can't live without. It's ironic as when I was growing up, she was always careful not to over-indulge me.
She would dress my sister and I in our matching velvet dresses, we went to church, had our lunch and watched the Wizard of Oz on TV.
Santa would always leave a Christmas stocking at the foot of our beds on Christmas morning but the main presents were always opened in the afternoon, which I suppose was our parents' way of trying to instil some self-discipline in their offspring. We never minded because it was what we were used to and we also knew that it was unlikely Santa would bring us everything on our Christmas list.
Not so with my niece and nephew. Normally two well-behaved children, they go wild at Christmas, fuelled by adverts for the latest toys that bombard them every time they sit down in front of the TV.
My husband and decided we would host the family festivities last year.
As my sister and brother-in-law live at the other end of the country, they stayed with us for a few days. It wasn't long before I was wishing they'd chosen a hotel instead. On Christmas Eve we took the children to the Christingle service at the local church, which is what we'd done when were young, but they couldn't concentrate. I could see them jiggling in their pews. The candlelit procession which had been magical to me as a child was boring to them. They didn't care about the baby Jesus. They were only interested in Santa.
Christmas morning was like a feeding frenzy. They were up at 5am and my brother-in-law had to practically sit on them to get them to stay in bed until a more reasonable hour. When they were finally allowed up they attacked the presents like two starving animals, ripping off the paper. There were so many gifts they wouldn't fit under the tree but even then there were disappointments. My five-year-old niece spent 20 minutes bawling because she hadn't been given the right Barbie doll.
I thought back to my childhood Christmases like the year I got my first pair of roller skates – nothing fancy – the type you strap on over your shoes. I don't remember getting anything else and I didn't want it. Those skates made met the happiest little girl alive.
When I asked my sister why she bought so much she just shrugged. "It's what everyone does. I don't want them to feel left out," she told me.
And that seems to be part of the problem. We're worried about what everyone else will do. I fell prey to it myself, spending hours decorating the house and preparing fancy food to impress my guests.
Christmas isn't just commercial, it's competitive. The Three Wise Men didn't max out their credit cards so they could buy better gifts for the baby Jesus than their colleagues. It's time we followed their example.