I am always struck this time of year by the amount of advertising we get shoved in our faces from a variety of sources. I can’t find the sports page in the paper because there is a commercial wrapped around it. The paper itself carries the extra weight of additional full-color ad sections; even the plastic bags keeping the paper dry are littered with advertisements! No mention of the TV ads we digest on a regular basis while watching our favorite Christmas movies, sitcoms, news channels, etc.
All of these play on my desire to want during this season.
I know, we’re supposed to use these sales, deals, and ads to generate lists of gifts for those we love, and to go and buy those, but in reality, I think our own Christmas lists can be so much longer than the lists we generate for others.
Why is this?
What has Christmas become, that we have turned something so potentially special into something so commercial?
Why is there a name for the shopping day right after Thanksgiving, where retail workers have to get to their stores at 3:30 in the morning in order to open for the hordes of people who have sometimes literally camped out in the parking lot overnight?
Why are we so consumer driven during this time of year? Certainly not for the pleasure of being in overcrowded shopping malls, fighting for parking spaces, spreading that lovely Christmas Cheer?
I think the ad agencies have figured something out about us that we haven’t: We like to compare.
If I can look at the advertisement for that new flat-screen HDTV, and then compare it with the TV sitting in my living room, I will suddenly become discontent with what I have. I end up believing the false promise that the new TV will provide me with the fulfillment I am missing.
If I get enamored with the new car with the Christmas bow on it, I climb into my older car to do some shopping, and am suddenly struck with the fact that my car isn’t fast enough, quiet enough, doesn’t have the best sound system.
The list goes on…
I compare what I see to what I have, I get discontent, and I go and make a purchase.
And I call it Christmas.
Is that what this has all been reduced to?
Whatever happened to the classic Christmas stories we used to hear about?
What about Dickens’ Scrooge? Where is he in our Story?
What have we held up as the standard for the holiday season? Multiple gifts, bought for spouses, children, brothers, sisters, parents, and other family members; then we expand the circle and add gifts for friends, co-workers, gift exchanges. And we get exhausted in the process.
All the while, there are people on the street with nothing.
Perhaps right next door.
Have we ever stopped to add up just how much we spend during this time of year?
Now—I’m not criticizing gift giving. I think it is absolutely critical to all of us that we give gifts to each other during this time. I am not an ascetic. What I am asking is, have we been sucked into the American standard of “bigger is better”, and allowed that to actually steal the joy from our giving this time of year?
What if we took a week where we didn’t look at any advertisements? Now, I know TV ads are basically unavoidable, but I’m talking about staring at the print ads, following the links on the top of the websites—these types of things. What if we didn’t chase after the bait for just one week?
What if we extended that discipline for an entire month?
What if, during the span between Thanksgiving and Christmas we stopped looking, stopped comparing?
Would we feel left out, would we really miss it? Or might we become a little more contented with what we have. Might we be moved to respond to the question of “what do you want for Christmas?” with a genuine, “I don’t know—I’m not sure I really need anything”.
Because, once we stop comparing, we might start realizing that we already have.
Lots.
Once we have quieted the drive for consumerism, we might begin to hear the whispers of those who don’t have, and we might be compelled to do something about that.
We might start asking ourselves just how far fifty dollars would go to a family in need.
Perhaps that family is someone we know. Perhaps they aren’t. Perhaps they are in need of a hand up—someone who has much, offering to someone who has little.
For isn’t that the spirit of Christmas, anyway?
No great stories are written about consumers; they are written about givers. Dickens would be nothing if he wrote about a family who kept buying, buying, buying, until there was no storage space for all the gifts in the house. No—what makes Dickens powerful is that the hero of the story is one who gives what he currently has to those who don’t.
That is the spirit of Christmas.
That is what makes heroes.
That is what happens when we stop comparing what we have to what we don’t, and instead begin to compare what we have to what they don’t.
That is what makes a story compelling.
That is what makes characters interesting.
If we’re willing to take a courageous step, if we’re willing to try something new, if we’re willing to look outside of ourselves, even if for a brief moment,
That could be us.
