Saturday, November 24, 2007
Happy Shopping
With Thanksgiving out of the way the annual three-pronged orgy of materialism, commercialism, and consumerism has begun. Oh what I wouldn't give for the Christmases of yore when the trinity of faith, family, and friends was the focus of the holidays ... the days when we worshiped at the Temple of God and not the Temple of Mammon (read: the mall).
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2 comments:
I agree.
While I love giving gifts to those I love, I hate shopping itself and all the commercialism. Last year I posted on the expressions of pain as the news anchors struggled to come up with any term other than "Christmas" to discuss the celebration of Christmas.
And the crowded malls...and the insane rushes the Friday after Thanksgiving...it's all insane!
My family was always poor, so maybe that protected us from some of that. Even now, we're all struggling, but we're much better off so our gifts to each other tend to be generous, although not to the current consummerism standards.
Thank God for the ability to find pleasure in the simple things, and most importantly, the true meaning of Christmas, that of the birth of our Savior. If we had no money for gifts, we'd celebrate just as much, if not more...because we'd have nothing to devote ourselves to but Him.
My wife loves to shop, and I hate it. This morning we decided our gifts this year to each other are going to be donations to a fund for my cousin's grandchild. I wrote about him in my last comment.
We're limiting our gifts to our granddaughter to one toy and about 17 outfits. Our daughter recently said we're not spoiling our granddaughter; we're spoiling her parents by buying her so many clothes. Maybe so, but those are "woman issues." I know that sounds terribly sexist, and I'm not sexist (could a married man who is the father of two daughters be anything other than a feminist?). I don't consider shopping a recreational activity AT ALL.
I think giving the money you'd spend on gifts to some kind of worthy cause is just a good way to celebrate the birth of the man/God who championed the cause of the poor. But that's just me.
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