While a number of people still celebrate Christmas for the nativity of Jesus, most regard it as an occasion for partying, over-indulgence, the ritual exchange of gifts and mass overconsumption. The gift-exchange aspect of Christmas becomes ever more prominent as the holiday spreads beyond its Christian origins and insinuates itself into cultures all around the globe.
Around this time every year, my inner Scrooge comes out and I think, Christmas is simply out of control. We buy way too much stuff, giving presents to people who don’t really want or need the stuff, who in turn give us stuff we don’t want or need. I literally have 25 or 30 woolen sweaters piling up in my closets, shirts I don’t need, pants I don’t need, jackets I don’t need. Why? I tell people, don’t buy me more stuff, I can’t use it, I don’t have anywhere to put it, I’ll have to give it away, but they do it anyway.
Bah, humbug!
How many million tons of Christmas wrapping winds up in the landfills around the country? How many closets, basements and attics are crammed with stuff we can’t use but don’t dare get rid of because Aunt so-and-so gave it to us and her feelings would be hurt? How much square footage do we add to our houses to hold all of this stuff? How much more are we paying on our mortgages for that square footage? How much do we expend in BTUs to heat that space? How much are we racking up debt on our credit cards?
Bah, humbug!
To what degree can the endemic balance-of-payments deficit and plummeting value of the U.S. dollar be attributed to our Christmas mania for buying more stuff? To what extent will future historians trace the decline of American power to indebtedness brought on, like those villagers in South America you read about in first-year anthropology classes, by our inability to reel in our propensity for exchanging gifts?
Bah, humbug!
How much energy is consumed producing, packing, transporting and disposing of all this stuff? How much pollution is emitted as a result? What irreparable damage are we doing to the environment? I shudder to contemplate.
We need to resurrect Ebenezer Scrooge — the authentic, skin-flint Scrooge, not the wimpy, spread-the-Christmas joy Scrooge he became after the Christmas ghosts scared the bejeebers out of him — and make him the new national icon.
(Photo credit of Alistair Sim as Scrooge in the 1950 movie “Scrooge”: Mudsugar.)