Christmas shopping. Some people do it all year long and some people do it all in a day. Is your Christmas shopping an event or a lifestyle? Do you have a budget and a plan before you head out to do the Christmas shopping? Or do you just go shopping? I have a budget and a plan. My budget is $50 per grandchild and my plan is to send somebody else to do the shopping.
What is your plan when you do Christmas? Is your Christmas holiday carefully scripted with each event noted on the calendar and fully planned or do you just let it happen? I do have a plan for Christmas. I do Christmas like I do most everything else in my life – KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid.) It is advice I share often with others; and am ignored. Most people I know just plow into Christmas with high expectations and absolutely no plan. Whatever comes up we will do and we WILL ENJOY IT, DAMN IT!
We North Americans do Christmas like we do most of life: Thoughtlessly, emotionally and expensively. Let's start with the expensive part. We spend an average of $450,000,000,000 per year on Christmas. Four hundred and fifty billion dollars. That is what Americans spend annually on Christmas. What is wrong with us? Lots!! And everything that is wrong with us really shows itself when we start celebrating a holiday. We do too much. Way too much. We spend too much, shop too much, eat too much, party too much, fight too much, expect too much, drink too much, complain too much, rush around too much, worry too much, give too much, and get too deeply in debt too much. It is absolute and complete lunacy. But if you propose not participating in all of this goofiness, the people around you go ballistic.
Go ahead. I dare you. I double dog dare you. Tell your families that you are not going to spend your way into debt buying every person you even vaguely know a Christmas gift. Tell your extended family that this year you are not going to run around like a chicken with its head cut off making the rounds of "family" gatherings. Instead, you are going to stay home and enjoy Christmas with your family. Trust me, heads will spin around and something like pea soup will explode out of every orifice in your loved ones heads. And most likely those loved ones will be your dear, sweet mothers and grandmothers. (Before attacking me for making this observation, I challenge you to disprove it.)
Start challenging the way your extended family does Christmas, propose that you are going to do some things differently, and then you will see some interesting stuff happen. This will become the time of year that the façade comes off and the gloves go on. You will hear it all. "How dare you not come to our house on Christmas?" (Or Christmas Eve, depends of your family traditions.) "I fix Christmas Dinner for you. I can't believe you are so selfish you won't come." (Hey, if you fixed it for me, box it up and bring it over to my house. You fixed the meal for you so everyone would feel obligated to show up at your place and hang out.) "Fine, cut back on your spending and disappoint your children. Maybe someone else in the family will buy them that amazingly expensive piece of crap they want that they will lose or break within the week. If you drop the ball we will continue their education in the importance of shallow, meaningless consumerism." (Hey, what are families for?) Temper fits will be thrown. Great huge buckets of guilt will be tossed around. You will be labeled crazy, a religious nut, selfish, godless, Scrooge, hateful, mean, stingy, thoughtless, etc.
The most interesting thing is that you are being the exact opposite of everything you are accused of being. To make and stick by such a decision is to be sane, Christian (which is not religious), godly, kind, giving, and thoughtful.
How about it folks? Let's do Christmas right this year. That way we can have the fun of really enjoying Christmas AND driving our families crazy.
Copyright © 2008, William T. McConnell, All Rights Reserved.
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