'Tis the season to break the bank?
This year I am becoming Ebenezer Scrooge or at least embodying the spirit of this favorite Dickens’ character. Bah humbug and all that. I have had it with the holiday rush, the pressure, and the ‘tis the season to buy-buy-buy commercials. Call me Ms. Scrooge and I won’t be insulted. Let me have my gruel and a bowl of hot punch and I’ll be fine. At the very least I won’t be broke.
Old Ebenezer Scrooge may have had it right all along about the annoyance of the Christmas season and he didn't even have to put up with televised commercials like we do in the 21st century. He was called a miser but was he really? Who had the right to tell the old guy how he should spend his money and on what or even whom? He may have gone overboard in the cheapskate department but it was his money. Imagine if he was around now with all the push to spend money. Granted he should have been more charitable but still…
I’m tired of the festive lights strung through towns beginning the day after Halloween, of stores pushing ridiculously expensive items to kids, of everyday normal prices sky-rocketing just because a holiday is coming; of everything geared to spend, spend, spend. But hell, we can pay it off monthly, right? That’s what the stores, credit card companies, and Madison Avenue are telling us. Well, as far as debt goes, Mr. Scrooge had another way of looking at the feeding frenzy of the season. When told to jolly up and get in the spirit of the season like others did
he said:
"What’s Christmas-time to you but a time for paying bills without money; a time for finding yourself a year older and not an hour richer, a time for balancing your books and having every item in them a round dozen of months presented dead against you."
Ol’ Ebenezer had a way with words he did. Being broke for the next 12 months has a way of placing a damper on the holiday Yule log.
The TV ads are the worst. At a time when many people are lucky to be able to pay the mortgage and buy food, we’re bombarded by advertising which shows us what we should have but which realistically, most can’t. One commercial in particular, put out by Lexus with THAT music playing in the background, shows wealthy couples in their Town and Country type digs go rushing outside to see a brandy-new Lexus tied with a big red bow. Oh, joy! You bought me an expensive car! Just what I wanted! Isn’t it great to be rich? Merry Christmas!
It’s supposed to be a feel good moment, sure, but it totally misses the point which is that, hardly anyone this holiday season can afford this special and wildly expensive gift. The sight makes me want to echo Scrooge again when he said, “Every idiot who goes about with 'Merry Christmas' (or says,“Hey honey, I bought you a Lexus as a Christmas present”), on his lips, should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart!" Indeed!
It isn’t that I dislike the season so much; I used to really enjoy it. It’s just that it seems to begin in mid-October, with the unremitting pressure of gift choosing and buying and a good four months before Christmas the stores are selling decorations!
The “He went to Jared’s”, the “Every kiss begins with Kay”, are slammed at us over and over again in all media. We can’t escape it. The problem is that if we don’t go to Jared’s or Kay’s, or buy the person we love that expensive Lexus, we are supposed to feel as if we somehow don’t measure up to the generosity of the season. That above all else gets to me. We’re being told what we should buy and how to spend our money by companies who will most certainly profit at our expense, literally.
Is money the new symbol of the spirit of Christmas? It is beginning to look that way.
We’ve lost something along the way as far as any holiday season goes. If our likeability is going to be based on how much money we spend on another person, then we’ve got a problem that will not go away any time soon. It will just get worse with each new season. The biggest toys, the most expensive car, the highest-priced jewelry, etc., etc. is a poor excuse for the spirit of Christmas.
If any Christmas spirits intend to pay this Scrooge a nocturnal visit on December 24, I ask only two things from them. Let the real spirit of Christmas, the kindness, the peace, and love return. And put an end to those damned annoying commercials!
Okay Spirits, I’m ready. Let’s get this over so you can turn me into a lovable Tiny Tim and I can truly say, “God bless us, everyone!”
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© 2011 Copyright Kristen Houghton
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twoday magazine wants to know: Is the commercialism this holiday season out of control and insensitive considering the financial plight we are facing nationally? Share your thoughts on our Facebook page!
erikdolnack
Bravo, Kristen! Terrific and timely article. I couldn’t agree more.
There really is two “Christmases”, isn’t there? First, there really is the religious Christian holiday that is supposed to be about celebrating the birth of the religion’s savior, where for centuries Christian believers have celebrated with their families and remembered hope, charity, and brotherly love. That’s one Christmas.
The other Christmas is the one that merchants have created, in order to make huge profits in their forth fiscal quarter. These mercantile corporations have learned that consumers tend to be far less prudent and pragmatic during a festive holiday season of giving. People are just more frivolous with their pocket book come holiday time and retailers prey on this psychology.
Everyone wants to think the best of Christmas. The holiday itself is framed as a positive thing in our lives. To be against Christmas is to be a “hater”, to be “negative”, to be anti-everything good, because what’s better than Christmas, right? Sure, we can each accept that frame. Or we can create another frame for Christmas, and call it a banal and crass way of preying on peoples’ feelings of obligation towards one another once a year (as if giving is a duty) and sell them crap they don’t want or need and force them by habit to overspend every twelve months and go deeper in debt. So which is it? Depends on your point of view, which framework you choose to adopt.
My family stopped giving gifts many years ago. I never have to Christmas shop for anyone now and I LOVE it. I feel no extra pressure this time of year. At worst, I just get annoyed at the extra lines and more crowded stores and coffee shops this time of year, as well as the thicker traffic with irritated and impatient drivers on the road.
In my honest opinion, religion aside, I seriously question whether the Christmas holiday really makes society happier. I honestly see most people feeling extra stress and pressure this time of year, and many feel left out and neglected where they don’t the rest of the year. Those with loving families feel the love, but those without family feel extra lonely this time of year. It’s little surprise that the statistics show that there are usually more suicides during the holiday season than any other time of year.
erikdolnack
My father used to have a saying, “When you’re poor, Santa doesn’t care if you hang yourself with your empty stocking!”
erikdolnack
In all truth, the American working-class is going through difficult economic times during this recession. It’s hard to feel festive when commercialism is being bombarded on you and you don’t have the extra money to spend. In a time of spending, we can’t afford to spend. And what is Christmas about if not buying more stuff? No one fantasizes about a lean & mean holiday season of scrimping and saving.
Truth be told, nothing will change for the American working-class as long as Bush’s 2001 tax cuts for the super-rich continue to hold us deeply in a deficit and military-spending on the “War on Terror” exceeds 20 Billion each and every month. We’ve spent over a trillion dollars on these wars since they began. Bush’s tax cuts for the super-rich cost this nation even more than that: over 1.6 trillion dollars so far.
As long as Wall Street continues to go unregulated, the risky lending practices will continue and another collapse is a dire and immediate threat to the Global economy.
As long as the leveraging ratio is set as high as 35:1, our economy is unstable and every investor will feel at unease. We need financial security today far more than quick and easy profits.
As long as unemployment continues to climb over 10%, consumer spending will be too low to climb out of recession. (Because that is what a recession is: a stock-piling of consumer products that aren’t being consumed). Warehouses are overloaded today with too few buyers around the world. We’re vastly over-producing today.
As long as over 45 million Americans are on food stamps, retailers cannot expect holiday sales to be anything but dismal this holiday season. People need to get hired at livable wages again and we’ll see an increase in consumer spending.
We need a return to Keynesian economics today. One man’s spending is another man’s wages. We need more money in circulation and less monopolization of wealth today. Taxes on those who can easily afford the raise need to be implemented to create jobs in the public sector that the private sector cannot provide. Keynesian economics pulled the Global economy out of a worse economic depression than this one in the past and can work for us again.
Speaking of Christmas, the concept of Keynesian economics was best presented in the holiday classic, “It’s a Wonderful Life” when George Bailey explains the concept of Savings & Loans to the public of Bedford Falls: “You’re thinking of this place all wrong. As if I had the money back in a safe. The money’s not here. Your money’s in Joe’s house…right next to yours. And in the Kennedy house, and Mrs. Macklin’s house, and a hundred others. Why, you’re lending them the money to build, and then, they’re going to pay it back to you as best they can.”
KristenHoughton
Thank you Erik! Great commentary!