Does materialism get in the way of us being able to celebrate christmas the way that it was intended?
Part of my holiday tradition is to write several Christmas cards, bake an insane amount of cookies to give to all of my loved ones, decorate my little apartment, shop for and wrap presents and oh yeah, celebrate the holidays. What I do is minor compared to some. In the midst of all of this holiday preparation I can’t help but wonder, do we really mean the “Happy Holidays” and all that goes with it?
It’s almost robotic how we go about our holidays, our minds are turned off as we shop and prep. The same thing year in year out and we call it tradition. If we put into practice the core belief behind Dickens story and let our riches melt away would we see the true meaning of the holiday or have we become a population of Scrooge’s?
As a perpetually optimistic person I believe that if we wanted to we could give up our materialistic bondages and enjoy what this holiday is supposed to be about. Having family on the holidays is something that has been stressed in my family. Before I was born my grandfather passed away on Christmas Eve. As the family legend goes, he was very happy because the majority of his family were present for the holiday, he was so happy that he convinced everyone to open presents that day. He passed on in his sleep that night. Every year since then my family has been meticulous about being with family on the holidays.
If we look beyond materialism and into what matters most about the holiday we can see what is more important, our family, what ever definition we put to it, in our own lives. Whether we have a whole lot of money or not perhaps that is what makes the difference between the Scrooge and the Crachets of the world. We appreciate others around us and regularly perform acts of kindness toward our fellow man.
Our holiday preparations don’t have to be so robotic. So what if we don’t get all of the Christmas cards out this year or don’t bake enough cookies to feed an entire army, what will our loved ones remember? The mountains of cookies we baked that went straight to our thighs or the fact that we put those material things second so that our family could have some quality time together. It’s a decision that we all have to make for ourselves, do we model ourselves after Ebenezer Scrooge or do we model ourselves after Bob Crachet?
