Consumer Christmas

I thought Christmas was about the birth of Jesus. However as I get older, I realize it's a clever marketing plot by stores to make the consumer buy more stuff. I feel overwhelmed at this time of year trying to racket my brains for gifts for people. The hunt for the perfect gift is tiring and never ending it seems.

Fortunately for me, I manged to stop exchanging gifts with friends a few years ago. When I started graduate school I decided to be HONEST and tell them I was broke and couldn't afford to keep buying gifts $25 for so many people. I think they were all happy that we could stop having to put on a show of looking for gifts and exchanging them. Since they we get together and have a meal out instead.

However I haven't found a way to be honest with my family. And my list for my family is huge. I am unable to claim being broke now, unlike before, but I find myself more and more exhausted looking for a "quality" gift people will like. I just want to sit and weep over the stress this holiday puts on people.

We run around like chickens without heads, buying things left and right that we suppose people will like. What if people are really like me, and what they would like best is NOTHING! No stress, if we have to give a gift, cash is great. Okay, by the way, as I sit here writing, I realized that I have to go and wrap gifts before dinner tonight for a couple who we're going out to dinner tonight and has kids. I could scream!

The commercialization of this holiday forces people to overspend. There appears now to be an obligation to give gifts to pretty much everyone. Do people really enjoy it? I love gift giving, but the pressure of finding the right present, mailing it out or ordering it online, is stressful. For example my in-laws and parents have everything. I never know what they want, last year harry and david and GC to places to eat. This year? What? More GC?

Next year I want to boycott Christmas. I wish we had a kid, just so I could be stupid and take a picture of the kid and put it in those digital photo frames. But if I did that with my dogs people would think me nuts.