December 1999
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What would you like Santa to bring you for Christmas?
Simplifying
the Christmas Season
A column by David E. Shi.
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InsideFurman is published monthly during the school year by the Furman University Department of Marketing and Public Relations. For story ideas, e-mail John Roberts, editor.
Simplifying the Christmas Season
By David E. Shi
President
The Christmas season is again upon us, replete with its magical excitements and sobering contradictions. No sooner does Thanksgiving end than the shopping frenzy begins. In fact, this year retailers began promoting Christmas sales just after Halloween.
Almost hourly, it seems, reporters alert us to the dwindling number of shopping days before the blessed event, and, like herds of dumb animals, we blindly head to the malls and stores, grumbling all the way about the terrible traffic, surly crowds and corrosive commercialism. Once inside the glittering bazaars, we push our patience and our credit cards to the limit, revealing little of the Christmas spirit in the process. After hours of searching and buying, we return home bruised, weary, and dazed, suffering from P.S.S. (post-traumatic shopping syndrome).
This is supposed to be the most joyous period of the year, yet a darkening anxiety enshrouds our activities. In households across the country, adults feverishly plan the greatest Christmas ever for their family and friends. With each passing day, however, we grow weary of the unending list of gifts to buy, social functions to attend, extravagant meals to prepare, and relentless "I wants" coming from the children. We worry that our best efforts at orchestrating the holiday events will fall short, and we realize too late that we are spending beyond our means. The January bills will produce a day of reckoning.
Some people are looking for a way to leave this holiday treadmill. One frazzled parent, exasperated by the demands of the season, confesses that "the holidays depress me so much, just thinking about the coming month makes me want to leave the country. Everything about it, shopping for gifts, wrapping, making holiday meals and treats, decorating the house, just makes me feel sad and tired — it seems like there’s no point to so much festivity. Sure, my kids probably would feel left out if we didn’t do what their friends families did, but otherwise, what’s the point?"
There are healthy alternatives to this stress-filled annual ritual. Jo Robinson and Jean Coppock Staeheli provide numerous examples of more fulfilling activities in their book, Unplug the Christmas Machine: How to Have the Christmas You've Always Wanted. As they point out, few of us think about the gifts received when we reflect upon our favorite Christmases. Instead, we recall the warm feelings generated by being with family and friends. "Most people," Robinson and Sateheli write, "spend more time and emotional energy on gift-giving than anything else, and yet gift-giving is consistently rated as the least valued aspect of the celebration."
So this year try to simplify the Christmas season and strike a healthier balance among its conflicting demands and temptations. December should be a time not primarily for self-indulgence, but for sharing in ways that promise renewal for ourselves and others. Transform the rituals of holiday preparations into group activities. Don’t burden mom with all the work and stress. Turn the television off, turn on your favorite Christmas music, and let the whole family help with the decorations, gift wrapping and food preparation. In lieu of conventional gifts, consider sending donations to area charities in the names of your friends and relatives. Or send a loved one a gift of your precious time. I know of one husband who gave his wife a day alone with her cello while he took the children on an outing.
Kids require special efforts at Christmas. Spend time discussing with them the spiritual meaning of the holiday. Shift their attention from getting to giving by having them work with you as volunteers at a soup kitchen or at Toys for Tots. Have them go through their own things and select items that they can give to other children. And, rather than encouraging children to develop an open-ended wish list, limit them to three requests. This will help them develop a keener sense of discrimination, alert them that there are healthy limits in life, and show them that love is given, not bought. "Teach children to choose the right path," says the Book of Proverbs, "and when they are older they will remain upon it."
The point of such suggestions is to help ensure that the Christmas season becomes centered on the nurturing activities that Jesus fostered: reaffirming faith, strengthening relationships and helping others. "By scaling down your activities," Robinson and Sateheli conclude, "you will have more time and peace of mind to enjoy the ones that remain." It is a gift to be simple — especially at Christmas.
(This column originally appeared in the December 6, 1998 issue of The Greenville News.)