How You're Ruining Christmas - And What You Can Do to Save It

You're ruining Christmas.

Not for me – how could you ruin it for me? No, yous're ruining information technology for yourself, for your family and friends, for everyone who loves you and who you love in return.

You started in August, when you saw the first niggling corner of the Mega-Mart decked out with Christmas bows and dancing Santas. It was just a few little grumbles then, but by Halloween information technology had grown into a roar. Every Christmas decoration, every carol, every artificial tree brandish you took as a personal barb.

"Tin can you believe it? Greedy bastards!"

"Ugh, Christmas is so commercial now. Wake me upwards for New Years!"

"Look at those people fighting over toys like animals. They're disgusting."

And on and on and on and on and on. We get information technology. You lot HATE Christmas!

What'south that? You don't hate Christmas? You say you only hate the materialism of it, the mode it'due south turned from a wonderful tradition into a buying frenzy, the forced gift-giving, the greedy little children waiting to open the latest whiz-bang-o on Christmas morn?

I come across. You hate that anybody else just doesn't get it. Not like yous do.

OK, so: what are you going to exercise near it? Because nobody can ruin your Christmas but you. Non a thousand Grinches, not a one thousand thousand Scrooges, not a googol saccharine greeting card ads.

How to relieve Christmas

1. Give gifts.

I know this whole "mandatory gift-giving" thing is a drag. Why tin can't you lot merely requite gifts when you feel like, instead of when society tells you to?

Here's the thing: in every club in the world, gift-giving is an obligation. One of the highest obligations, actually. It is the central basis of all human economical beliefs. Here'south why: giving gifts ties us together in a profound way. It creates a web of reciprocity that binds us, ane to the other.

Consider what a educatee told me about his family's gift-giving tradition some years ago. He has 4 brothers, all scattered effectually the nation, reuniting in the family unit home in Queens, NY, every Christmas. On Christmas morning, they come across around the tree, and each gives the other $100. Cash.

There'due south a applied reason: they don't all want to fly dwelling house laden with bulky presents, then fly away laden with new ones – and they don't want to get home just to discover that the present they picked out is unwanted. But if you're doing the math, you're noticing something odd. Each gives the other $100. That'due south $400 out ($100 to each of 4 brothers) and $400 back ($100 from each of four brothers). It's a wash.

And however, something happened there. It's clearer if you ask yourself: why $100? Why not $20, since nobody was coming out of the exchange alee? Or why not $one thousand? Or a one thousand thousand? Afterwards all, nothing's coming out of anyone's pocket, right?

They give each other $100 because they're brothers, and because that feels right for a gift for a blood brother. You don't give nothing, because that'south similar saying your relationship isn't worth annihilation. You don't give a crazy amount, considering that'south absurd.

The point is, quite literally, that it'south the idea that counts. We say it all the time, but they actually mean information technology.

So you're going to requite gifts. Considering you lot call up highly of the people around you.

2. Embrace materialism.

I know, y'all don't listen giving gifts, it's the materialism of information technology. Why do you have to go out, braving the maddened crowds, alluvion parking lots, and biting winter cold to prove to your family and friends that yous dear them?

Well, you can brand gifts, and if you lot're talented at making things, by all means go ahead and make to your heart's content. But here's the rub: nigh of us aren't. Good at making stuff, that is. Nosotros spent years developing a set of skills that let u.s. to get along in life, and making things isn't actually on that listing. You tin marketplace the heck out of but about anything, residual the yearly books, make a global distribution network sing, or serve up platters of pasta like nobody'southward business – only those highly developed skills don't really translate to Christmas morn goodies.

Here'south what you are good at: you're good at shopping. You exercise it to survive, and you're all the same live, right? I know that seems cold and detached to you, but seriously: information technology's humanity'south oldest skill. 100,000 years ago your great-great-great-nifty[…]-cracking-grandmother walked through the savannas, forests, deserts, and river bottoms of Africa, the Eye East, Indonesia looking for food and raw materials, and every now and again she grabbed a nice melon or a juicy turtle thinking "You know who would similar this? Sally in bookkeeping would just eat this up!"

That's what you're doing out at that place in the malls, craft fairs, and boutiques of the Christmas season: putting your own survival needs on hold for a infinitesimal while you consider the needs and desires of the people you honey. Putting your skills to the test as surely equally your woodworking father or candle-making aunt is.

3. Sing a ballad. Decorate a tree.

It's astonishing to me that people can decry the materialism of Christmas in the same breath as they mutter about hearing "Silent Night" or "Petty Drummer Male child" over the PA.

I hateful, we say we want to strip away the materialism so we can get at the "real meaning" of Christmas. Well, here'south the thing: those Christmas carols are the meaning of Christmas. They're songs well-nigh love, joy, peace, and happiness – all things that nosotros've been trained to see every bit stupid. That's right – we are a cold, detached, ironic, cool-seeking people who hates songs that talk near beingness happy as if it were something people could do.

Put that in your corn-cob pipe and smoke it.

Christmas carols are our Christmas traditions. Some of them are hundreds of years old. They connect us with our parents, and their parents, and their parents parents, and then on – to people who wouldn't know a Tickle-Me Elmo if it scrap them on their bellies like bowls full of jelly.

Take abroad the souvenir-giving, and what we take are the songs, the red-and-light-green tinsel, the soft glow of the tree. Kids laughing. Seriously, yous're gonna bah-humbug Christmas carols?

4. Go to church. Or don't.

For some of us, Christmas is a religious holiday. Not all of united states. Maybe not fifty-fifty most of us. But if you're i of the people for whom this 24-hour interval is important because it marks the birth of Our Lord and Savior, past all means, get to church building. Celebrate. Pray. Requite cheers. It's a wondrous thing, to take a messiah.

But for many of us, Christmas is a day off from work, a day total of tradition and a spirit of giving that lets us exist with our families. That's not nothing! Nosotros live scattered lives – fifty-fifty if we live in the same city every bit the rest of our family, which is pretty unlikely, there'southward a pretty good take chances we don't see them every bit often as we'd like. We don't celebrate them as frequently as we'd similar. And certainly not all together, in one place, with gifts and feasting and songs.

Let's say you give up the souvenir-giving. No more materialism for you! And let's say y'all give up the carols. And the tree. Run across, I get all that. I disagree, but I become information technology. It's overwhelming. It's too much. I empathize.

Only in that location's your family, all with the same day off. Who cares why – you all have the day off! That'southward a rare and special affair. So what are you lot going to do?

You could do what Jews have been doing for the terminal two millennia: catch a movie with your family and go out for Chinese. It's great: the roads are practically empty, at that place'due south ever a not bad selection Christmas week (as studios rush to become their big Oscar contenders out before the year-end deadline), and Chinese food is delicious. What's more, you'll spend the whole mean solar day relaxing with your family unit, just enjoying each other'southward company.

Or create your own traditions. Become sledding or hiking or kite flying (for our readers in the Southern Hemisphere). Pull out the photograph albums and play "What was I thinking?!" Play GiftTRAP or some other party game.

4. Stop your whining and take a merry Christmas!

The world is how it is. We're consumers, and we alive in a commercialized society. If that bothers you – and information technology should – by all ways, devote yourself to irresolute the earth. Only start Dec 26th and proceed at it until side by side Nov, when it'southward needed. Everyone's a critic from Thanksgiving to Christmas, and nosotros do nix about it.

Becoming a revolutionary for the Christmas season isn't helping. All information technology'south doing is ruining your holidays for you, and for anybody who cares about you lot. Instead of whining near how much Christmas sucks, how about applying some positive thinking to finding the special core that makes Christmas work for you, whether that's the social relationships that Christmas gift-giving cements into something solid and indelible, the traditions that give united states permission to imagine a world in which being good to i another isn't an absurdity, or the fourth dimension you get to  spend celebrating your family.

It's up to you lot. The stores are doing what they have to do to make money, which is their job. The mobs of shoppers are doing what they have to exercise to make their Christmas work for them. You're the simply one who can make Christmas special. You've got a week. Take at it!

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Source: https://www.lifehack.org/articles/featured/how-youre-ruining-christmas-and-what-you-can-do-to-save-it.html

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