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Christmas consumerism
I hate the idea of Christmas shopping. It’s extremely stressful, not to mention it theoretically balances out in the end so we may as well buy the stuff we want ourselves. So I just don’t do any such shopping, save for a few Steam gifts. In exchange, I don’t expect presents from anyone.
Wanna know what I consider a better Christmas gift? Spending time with friends and other loved ones, e.g. through dining out or an at-home party, the latter of which I did last week and had a good time with. Especially since three of the eight friends who turned up live an hour’s drive away friends who visited and two of those particular friends don’t drive. And since this wasn't a convention or other large event, this gave me a chance to simply relax and enjoy time with friends that I don't get to see often.
Related are spoiled brats who go, "Wah, I didn’t get
Comments
This. Thank you.
IJBM: consumerist culture, in general.
I hate how everyone complains about Christmas consumerism while at the same time contributing to it.
I ate a tree
The only justification for Christmas to me is Q4 profits for (almost) any business that buys/sells things (which is good since our economy probably wouldn't survive without such a huge concentration of impulse buys, which is what presents are if you didn't ask for them really) and if Christmas didn't exist there'd be some other holiday for people to do this stuff over, which we would all complain about too.
I have absolutely nothing against it, Christmas is a tradition built around it and it's not a good idea to pretend that it's not (Yes religious things but realistically Christmas would be a much smaller holiday without the huge amount of money involved).
I'll buy what I have to, I'll get what I get and I'll move on because I really don't want to put any more effort into this dumb holiday (opposing it is a lot of effort).
Do people really do this? If they do they have much bigger problems than one day out of 365/6.
Could you expand on this point?
The most effort I'll do is getting a few things for my friends and family and maybe try and cook a really great meal.
Camp out on Twitter or Facebook searches once Christmas morning comes and you'll probably see it happen. The same happened last year.
Humans can do some unbelievably stupid stuff. I don't mean "not RTFM'ing" stupid, I mean "did you even pass fifth grade" stupid. Like for example, bragging about one's credit card by posting an uncensored image of it.
Christmas shopping horror stories, whines about the War On Christmas/pagan appropriation/smug atheists, misanthropes ranting about society's forced sociality while at the same time wondering why the hell they're spending Christmas alone again, family dinner horror stories, preachy folks trying to piss on everyone's holiday experience by trying to guilt them into supporting cause X, baldheads ineffectively trying to revive the White Christmas meme again and again: you can make a bingo card out of this.
Making bingo cards is hard.
I tried to make one about one guy in an IRC channel that used a bunch of phrases over and over and was in general a shithead with many stupid agendas.
It was hard. Had to really stretch.
Honestly, I kind of feel like people should never feel entitled to receive gifts or have an obligation to give them.
I think that believing that one is owed a gift for an occasion like one's birthday or Christmas can end up making one less grateful for that gift. Basically, if giving gifts is the custom for Christmas, receiving something is much more of an expected event than a pleasant surprise. That expectation may help encourage the "spoiled brat" mentality Raydere mentioned by making one believe that one is entitled to a present. It seems to me that people are less likely to be eager to thank others for just doing what they are supposed to do, so giving presents on a regular basis may not encourage people to be thankful either.
Plus, there is probably something to be said about focusing less on material stuff in general, since there are bound to be inequalities there that can make certain people, especially children, feel bad about themselves for rather unfounded reasons.
I think it is perfectly fine to give people gifts when you feel like doing so, but in my view feeling obligated to give gifts can also be a little problematic. Practically speaking, not everybody has the funds, time, or familiarity with somebody to give a good gift. It seems as though that obligation can create unneeded stress for such people, particularly when there are also time constraints related to a certain day of the year.
That all said, I understand that it can be tough to push back against long traditions of giving gifts at certain times and that it may be a little difficult to explain why you wish to opt out. I doubt most people want to be the one to tell their kid that he/she will no longer receive a gift for birthday/Christmas/whatever. Still, I wonder if the problems associated with Black Friday and the other facets of Christmas consumerism would decrease if more people started opting out.
To be honest, I did cave into Black Friday sales. Got a 3DSXL for $150. I do try to be on my best behavior, even if customer service can get pretty delayed on that particular day.
(tip: if you must do physical shopping, find the deadest mall with a Target or something and go there.)