Happy Consumerday!
How did Christmas become about buying stuff for people? How does this equate to the religious significance of the day? Perhaps we simply like gift-giving in isolation and that is really the theme of Christmas that we would like to promote even if the religious themes fall into deficit.
Uhm, the religious themes that am I talking about are compassion, love, understanding and so forth for others. I realize that these are hard to package and put a bow around and stick under a tree for some 8 year old kid to tear open in nanoseconds, but in the grand scheme of life, what would carry forward and have greater significance?
I'm 33. I think I either sold, lost or set fire to my G.I. Joe and Star Wars action figures. I haven't played with toys in at least . . . wow . . . 20 years. But those character traits. Those damn things just won't go away. I use them every day in my decider making process.
. . . decision maker process
. . . decision making processor
It's your decision, but I give you an option. To spend the holiday scurrying around buying stuff for people. Or giving something else. Something less tangible, but held onto for a lifetime. Your time, your compassion, your knowledge, your friendship or whatever else you already possess. It's tough to transform and transcend. But maybe that is the true significance of the day!
Merry Progressive Christmas!
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December 9, 2008 |
Jenson Hagen | Comments (9 so far)
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Comments
Posted by: Steve Maurer | Dec 9, 2008 7:24:23 PM
Christmas "become about buying stuff for people" very early, as most of the traditions we equate with it are a mish-mash of various European solstice holidays, the most influential of which were the Roman week of Saturnalia (from which we got gift giving), the feast Sol Invictus (from which we got the date December 25th), and various pagan German traditions (from which we got evergreen trees and mistletoe, the only two plants clearly alive in winter, and thus showing the promise of spring).
It was unlikely that Jeshua (Jesus) himself was born during this time, as shepherds don't "watch over their flocks by night" mid-winter. Preferring their sleep, they usually keep sheep in the barn during nighttime, except during "lambing" which happens in late spring. The early Christians didn't even celebrate Jesus' birthday. It was Easter, the death and resurrection, that was important to them.
So Merry Saturnalia, all you gift giving fools! And I mean that literally: Saturnalia was also the source of another great holiday, April Fools (the date was changed to spring by a pope).
Posted by: Tom Carter | Dec 10, 2008 5:45:00 AM
The origins of many of our holidays are interesting. But, unfortunately in some cases, we're stuck with them the way they are.
Try this: On Christmas Day, give your spouse or significant other nothing more than a loving wish for peace and happiness. How long do you think it will take him/her to forget that your loving wish had no present attached to it? Forever!
And what would happen to our economy if we suddenly stopped the Christmas spending spree? Even deeper into the tank. As Oliver Hardy might have said to Stan Laurel, "This is a fine mess we've gotten ourselves into!"
Posted by: Stephanie | Dec 10, 2008 9:04:53 AM
Christmas isn't meant to be about the giving of 'stuff' but the giving of 'ourselves'. Christians across the country are celebrating Advent Conspiracy this year and encouraging their friends and families to give homemade gifts and gifts of time and then give the money they would have spent on gifts to local and global development projects. Really an amazing movement.
Check it out: http://www.adventconspiracy.org/
Posted by: Francesco Bernadone | Dec 10, 2008 10:32:37 AM
Check it out: http://www.adventconspiracy.org/
That is awesome! I've been promoting doing something, rather than giving something up for Lent with the novices for years. This is a wonderful compliment to it.
Regardless of religion or not, I think anything that encourages the culture to have more of a sense of sacred time than simply "the week-end" is very healthy.
Posted by: joel dan walls | Dec 10, 2008 11:28:20 AM
I read this sort of item annually. Sorry, but being one of the non-Christian (both religiously and culturally), it means little to me. But given that someone here remarked on Dutch Christmas traditions, it seems important to remember that the US is not Europe. Many European countries still have established churches, and European cultures pay very little heed to non-Christian minorities and their cultures and traditions. In my experience having lived in Europe, this typically takes the form of a sort of bland ignorance: Jewish traditions--and now, given current demographic trends, Muslim traditions--are commonly viewed as exotic, to be contrasted with Christian traditions and the secularized versions thereof, which are regarded are "normal" or "mainstream". Example: A British professional acquaintance once remarked to me how odd he found it, during his several years living in the US, that Jewish holidays and holiday traditions even merited attention and newspaper space.
the religious themes that am I talking about are compassion, love, understanding and so forth
For me those are not religious themes at all. It may well be that your personal experience of "compassion, love, understanding" are informed by a religious practice, but one needn't attend a religious institution, or read sacred texts, or defer to clergy, or believe in gods to make compassion, love and understanding part of your life.
Posted by: BOHICA | Dec 10, 2008 6:29:28 PM
Considering that in the early days of the Republic Congress worked through Christmas, basically ignoring the holiday, the tradition of buying gobs of stuff started later than we are taught to believe.
Posted by: Zarathustra | Dec 11, 2008 9:42:51 AM
For me those are not religious themes at all. It may well be that your personal experience of "compassion, love, understanding" are informed by a religious practice, but one needn't attend a religious institution, or read sacred texts, or defer to clergy, or believe in gods to make compassion, love and understanding part of your life.
I agree that this has become Christianity's weakest point, that some kind of grace or enlightenment is needed to subscribe to those values which are largely just good sense.
I'll never get this thing in Portland that Mayor Katz used to get all the time, "but that's what they do in Europe". So?
Posted by: BOHICA | Dec 10, 2008 6:29:28 PM
Considering that in the early days of the Republic Congress worked through Christmas, basically ignoring the holiday, the tradition of buying gobs of stuff started later than we are taught to believe.
That's the point! It started with Queen Victoria- the Prince specifically- from the cards to the trees, etc. I really, really, wish that what happened in England hadn't been gobbled up by Americans, but it was. I agree Xmas is a European phenomenon. Watching the Aussies with the Boxing Day bar-b-qs or South Africans really shows how much it's a transplanted tradition that often makes little sense.
I agree with Steve that the real happening is the solstice. If you're in tune with nature it makes sense why it was so important to every culture. Every day getting shorter, every night lengthening, every minute colder... When the sun has come back enough you can detect it, that's a reason to party! Interestingly for those that say "xmas starts after Halloween these days" that this more primitive view really was a continuous season, from Halloween to the Solstice.
Example: A British professional acquaintance once remarked to me how odd he found it, during his several years living in the US, that Jewish holidays and holiday traditions even merited attention and newspaper space.
Brits are often amazed at the "special interests" that we don't simply ignore, tell them to suck it up and keep a stiff upper lip!
Posted by: john | Dec 12, 2008 2:36:27 PM
I love these preachy posts. What a novel theme! The true meaning of Christmas! Gosh, where have I hard that one before?
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Posted by: Zarathustra | Dec 9, 2008 6:41:49 PM
I know the "Dutch model" horse gets flogged around a bit too much, but I was just discussing this with a friend in Leiden, NL, tonight and we returned to the same point as always.
For whatever reason, their society has evolved to regard December 6, St. Nicholas Day, as the material part, and the 25th as the spiritual part. Apart from Zwarte Piet who would no doubt inspire PC horror in the US, it basically works.
But they do answer your question, about how it became about getting stuff for people. St. Nicholas got a poor maiden teh stuff she needed at a hopeless moment, so the pure integerity of the holiday is essentially about stuff, imo.
If you mean "why does the US consumer go in for it", I think that has to be because that's how the US economy works. That was the real threat of the 9/11 attacks. The attack on US discretionary spending which is what makes or breaks the economy.