Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Ba Humbug
It's started: the hypocrisy season is in full swing.
This time of year, the air is ringing with two constant hymns. First, the weeping about materialism coming from the people who are participating in it the most. For example, here's an actual quote from one of the rich big-shots around my office:
"I don't know what I'm going to get for my kids for Christmas. We're going as a family to Jamaica for Christmas week and I'm buying a new Wii for the household. I've tried telling the kids that those are their Christmas presents, but they're telling me that those are family presents and that it's not really Christmas unless there's something under the tree. The season has just become so materialistic!"
Ya know, if you get to the point where your kids are bored with going to Jamaica, you've pretty much lost the spiritual battle against materialism, I figure.
The second song of the season is the moaning from the fundamentalist Christians about secularists trying to "take the real meaning out of Christmas". Well, maybe they should have thought of that back, oh, 170 years ago when they allowed one of their saints to become a symbol of unfettered greed and gluttony; a symbol used to indoctrinate children into those "Christian" values, no less.
Plus, in my experience, fundamentalist types are more materialist than most people. The only thing they hold back on at Christmas is the liquor, the lack of which only makes their bourgeois vulgarity more tiresome.
Really, when you think of it, there is scarcely a more anti-Christian season than Christmas. How exactly are greed, gluttony and liquor supposed to remind us of the spiritual values of that great prophet?
Before I go any further, I should emphasize that I'm as big a hypocrite as any one. I enjoy the festive piss-ups thoroughly and I'm notorious in our family for falling into deep black moods when I feel I've received inadequate presents.
It seems no one, anywhere in the world, can dodge the Christmas virus. For one thing, the world economy practically depends on it. It is an addiction that will probably follow our civilization until its end.
I wish I could be more of a hippy about this. There's a concept I'd love to promote, but my conservative values block me from being too much of an activist about it. Here it is:
Give poetry for Christmas.
Pretty simple, eh? Instead of giving your family all this bullshit crap they're going to throw out in a few months, take the time (i.e. put a few months into it) to write down all your positive feelings about your loved ones. Practice calligraphy. Put it on fancy paper. Maybe even put it in a frame.
How long would your kids treasure a present like that? At first, of course, they would hate it, but in time they would value it more and more, like an investment building interest. After you are dead, your kids would probably cry buckets just thinking about your poems.
And how about spouses? How many marriages could do with an injection of poetry once in awhile?
It's not going to happen, though, at least not in my house. I have a knack for buying presents and I especially enjoy shopping for things to surprise and delight my wife. And my kids, who are not spoiled but rather are hard-working contributors to our home, really have earned a few special wishes. And, gawdammit, as much as I hate to admit it, as un-Buddhist as it is, I thrive on the flattery of material presents too.
But still, it would be nice, wouldn't it? I think it would be very cleansing, like a spiritual enema, flushing out all the materialistic crap our civilization loads on us.
So maybe some year I'll do it. It's a nice Christmas dream to keep alive, don't you think?
posted by Mentok @ 10:23 a.m.,
6 Comments:
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At 10:20 p.m.,
cchang said...
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Really, when you think of it, there is scarcely a more anti-Christian season than Christmas. How exactly are greed, gluttony and liquor supposed to remind us of the spiritual values of that great prophet?
Amen, brotha.
Seriously though, wasn't Jesus technically born in March or something?
Ya know for T and I's first Christmas together, we each wrote down 100 reasons why we love the other person. Cheesy, but meaningful. Furthermore we were piss ass poor. Goes to show creativity comes when the money stops. In all honesty the best gift to this day that I ever got from Darlin Hubby was a pair of "magic" wool socks. -
At 12:55 p.m.,
Mentok said...
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Wow, that "100 reasons" idea is great. And the thing about it (even more so than coming up with decent poetry) is that you'd have to work at it. I expect it would probably be easy to crank off the first couple dozen but then get really hard for awhile until you got to around 50 or 60 and then things would just start to flow.
I agree that size of presents doesn't matter but rather, as cheesy as it sounds, it really is the thought that counts. Knowing that someone "gets" you, that's much more important than a price tag. -
At 6:03 p.m.,
said...
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warms my heart to think of my children crying buckets of tears after i'm dead when they read the loving words i wrote to them . . .
every year, we toy with the idea of giving a token present (so that there's something under the tree) and then giving charitable donations in people's names. we've never done it though. the pull of materialism is too strong, plus the recipients of the donations in lieu of gifts would never understand. i don't think they would, anyway.
and cindy, that 100 reasons thing would be a lot easier the first year you're married, for sure, coz right now i think it'd be pretty damn hard to come up with half as many! :0
great post, mentok. : ) -
At 8:17 p.m.,
Library Mama said...
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Well, folks, considering that I had just entered my happy Christmas place this morning (after finishing the black hole stress of report cards and parent-teacher interviews at work last night)and that reading this post of my darling husband's has managed to dampen my mood when I was sure nothing could, I might be able to give him that "100 reasons" for Christmas by the year 2015.
(But only if he gives me one of those "delight"ful gifts he has such a "knack for buying" every year between now and then.) -
At 7:19 a.m.,
adam said...
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We give lots of token presents and lots of things from Oxfam Unwrapped - their catalogue is here - http://www.oxfam.org.uk/shop/Browse.aspx?catalog=Unwrapped&category=UWGifts
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At 11:46 a.m.,
Mentok said...
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After ... active discussion of this topic around our household, I have come to feel it is important to add the following provisos:
1) Rather than call it "hypocrisy season", I should have said "this season tends to bring out the hypocrisy in hypocritical people, but this is in no way a reflection on those people who enjoy the season for sincere reason."
2) For many frugal middle-class families, Christmas serves as an important control mechanism for materialism (e.g. by restricting major toy purchases to that period) rather than as a fuel for it.
3) In light of the fact that the practice of material gift-giving is not so nearly corrupt as I initially suggested, I amend my Christmas notion to read "try giving poetry at Christmas IN ADDITION TO the regular gifts."
This last point, certainly, no one can argue. If we all started in August to write poems for our loved ones, that could only serve to amplify and purify the act of giving other gifts at Christmas, right?
