"It's Christmas. Buy This Crap."
Christmas shopping starts in earnest this week. Spurred on by hundreds of millions of dollars of advertising, more than one hundred and fifty million Americans will celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ by engaging in a mindless, debt-building, four-week frenzy of consumerism.
They will shop every day from here to Christmas. And every day from here to Christmas, experts will extract some giant rectal thermometer from the sphincter of the economy, read the retail sales numbers, and announce them to a hovering Wall Street.
Then Wall Street will pronounce the numbers, "Not good enough," and go to the whip to spur the offending retailers on. And offending retailers will lower prices in an effort to amp the Christmas shopping frenzy up.
And for what? So you can give that dork of a brother-in-law some object made in China? Rest assured that, whatever you choose to give him, your brother-in-law will still be a dork after you've given it to him.
It might be different if retailers didn't just phone Christmas in these days. But no.
For retailers, fleecing America at Christmas has become a birthright. Like the Bush family's birthright to the presidency. And, like a Bush presidency, Christmas has acquired meaningless form and shed substance at an alarmingly accelerating rate lately.
For retailers, it's down to cliché advertising (kids in scarves, sweaters and stocking caps, snowflakes, trees, lights, etc.) in-store signage, cheap seasonal help, and Christmas music over the PA system.
Never mind the real meaning of Christmas. They can't even get the real meaning of Christmas retail right.
They're telling us, "It's Christmas. Buy this crap." That's all.
Recently, the Fed dropped interest rates and released $40 billion in an effort to coax a few more RPMs out of the sputtering V-8 of the American economy. No doubt, they had the housing sector and the subprime mortgage crisis in mind.
But you've got to believe the Fed was sending the rest of us another message, too. The message says, "It's Christmas. Buy this crap."
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I have a dream - a dream of a holiday season during which those who support the Constitution make contributions to organizations that fight to protect the Constitution - blogs like truthout.org, ACLU, the center for constitutional rights, impeachbush.org, etc. The protectors of the Constitution give gift certificates for things that people need - food and gas. The protectors of the Constitution offer to make a contribution to charities in the recipients' names. The protectors of the Constitution give subscriptions to magazines that help to inform others. The protectors of the Constitution create a gift - write a poem, knit a hat, etc. NO more crap - no more giving because you "have to." Give with thought, give with love, give in a way to make the world a better place. Give of yourself, not because a commercial convinced you to.
My wife and I refuse to buy each other gifts on Hallmark holidays. It's that simple
Everyone knows that Christmas an ugly, materialistic orgy; but few are willing to live by their principles. We need a socially acceptable way to acknowledge the goodness of sharing and generosity, while at the same time opting out of the acquisitiveness.
Are you buying "all this crap" simply because you'd be embarrassed not to participate in the giving? Consider the broader moral implications of your gifts. For example, the amount of physical material in every product you buy, on average, represents only 5 percent of the raw material required to fabricate and deliver it; the rest is waste. Every frivolous item we buy comes with an environmental and social cost that we rarely stop to consider.
Does thinking this aspect of the Christmas season help to tip you in favor of non-material gifts this year?
MBJ
http://memestreamblog.wordpress.com
You forgot the "War on Christmas"(tm) hypocracy that should start surfacing any day now. Some talking head will start screaming about how "liberals" are trying to take the meaning out of Christmas (paging Mr O'Riely) and ignoring the fact that their big buisness buddies on the right traded Jesus for a Cabbage Patch doll back in the '80s.
Society has destroyed Xmas as is expressed by the soaring suicide rate during the Holidays.
Consumerism, has always been the American version of optimism. We were an economy on the come, even our amex cards come in different colors to show off our purchasing power, next year there will be a better job, more money, we'll buy a new house, a new couch, a new hat.
This America is a very different story, but people can't come to terms with it. It's denial. Xmas crap, supports it. And, Macy's looks like rush hour on the subway.
The free-falling dollar!
Lead-based toys from China!
Corporate greed!
Little or no raises for the workers!
Benefit package decreases!
Obama's Social Security crisis!
Increase in exports, expensive imports!
Closing libraries, hospitals, clinics!
Foreclosures, bankruptcies, skyrocketing oil prices!
And on and on and on!
Yeah, Merry #$%$& Christmas!
Great post -- speaks directly to my holiday sentiment this year! As to the brother-in-law, maybe all that poisonous, lead-laden stuff from China can have some positive outcome. Or, just for amusement, possibly something from the date-rape-drug-infused selection set?
It's Christmas, buy this crap....beautiful.
Spend so we can continue to send billions to foreign governments that are our friends today and who will be on the evil-list tomorrow.
Spend so we can continue to guarantee a permanent military presence in Iraq.
Spend so we can enrich the Chinese even further.
Consumerism is ugly. And the old adage is proving true: Capitalism will eat itself.
Yeah, it's soooo predictable. Every year the talking heads say it's not going to be as good a shopping season for retailers as it was in the past, numbers are crunched as Christmas Day approaches and the forecast is pronounced as being dismal, the big day comes & goes and, WHAM! the best season ever is proclaimed!
What kind of a chicken shit game is this anyway? I guess they think we're all morons because they continue this farce.
Oh, yeah, it's about selling advertising! The MSM wants to jack everybody up so they'll go out and buy, buy, buy their advertisers' products. It has nothing to do with reality. The reality that the middle class has virtually disappeared in American society. And we were the engine driving the economy.
And George drove us into the same ditch as the one we're in because of Iraq. Nice going, asshole!
(Like he cares.)
Christmas celebrates the 2 things that have done the most damage to mankind.....organized religion and consumerism.
exactly exactly exactly
I've never seen this sentiment expressed better!
In this wonderful rustbelt economy...as wages are flatlined and the cost of basic commodities are skyrocketing...Our conflict over Christmas is solved. We have had 2 choices for the past 3 or 4 years:
1. Blow the meager amount of savings we have left over at the end of the year on mindless consumption.
2. Wait until after the holidays when everything gets marked down and 'celebrate' the materialistic aspect of this holiday in late January or February.
Believe me, I could get suckered if I had the extra spending money. I actually admit to wanting "stuff" from time to time. But, if we want to have any money in savings at all after paying for necessities, working on our old house and covering things like insurance each month, we have to cut somewhere. And we have decided to cut back on holiday spending.
There will be some gifts for my daughter...but my husband and I will skip it. And, our families have agreed that nobody has the money for this kind of spree shopping. We just get together and eat well and then everything goes out later to get themselves a treat...something that they actually want and something that is probably on sale.
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