I can remember standing with my back to the burning fireplace, eyeing my sister and I’s freshly opened mound of new toys and clothes in silence. It was Christmas morning. Wrapping paper littered the floor and holiday classics played from the corner of the room. My mom and dad were probably exhausted from my sister and I waking them up at a horribly early hour, jumping on their bed as we did every year when we were younger. We had to see what Santa brought us.
This year I couldn’t have been older than 5 or 6. In the living room I was counting gifts, comparing my sister’s haul to my own. To my dismay, she got more presents than I did. Jealousy rose within me. Clearly, Santa and my parents liked my sister more than me. Gifts equalled how well I behaved that year, gifts equalled “good job.” My poor parents, to go to all that effort for the perfect Christmas only to have it tarnished by an entitled tantrum.
All I can remember is my parents telling me it doesn’t matter how many gifts I got. I should be thankful for what I did get, they said. I really regret that.
I’m not sure where that idea of entitlement came from, or where I learned to put so much value on the stuff I was given. I remember making a Christmas list, adding as many toys as I could. At the time, I really didn’t care what it was. I wanted it all. I figured the more new things I could get, the better Christmas would be.
Maybe it was all the Christmas movies plotting to get the present to the child before Christmas morning. Or perhaps it was the constant barrage of commercials showing me girls a little older than me playing with the newest toy, now on sale for the holidays. It might be that I internalized the sheer mania surrounding Black Friday. On the news one year I heard about a Walmart employee who was trampled to death by the crowd storming inside. From fact to fiction, there’s always been so much emphasis and value placed on having ‘stuff.’
A family tradition in my house is watching Dr. Seuss' How The Grinch Stole Christmas!, a 25 minute cartoon about a green furry creature named The Grinch, who hates Christmas. On a quest to stop Christmas from coming, he steals all the holiday meals, decorations, and presents from a town called Whoville. Waking up to find their homes barren and refrigerators empty, the townspeople continue with Christmas as usual, singing in the streets. The Grinch hears their singing and has a change of heart; the cartoon’s pivotal moment rhymes, “Maybe Christmas, he thought, doesn’t come from a store. Maybe Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more.”
The Grinch’s light hearted jab at consumerism becomes more and more poignant every time I finish this film. Year by year I can see Christmas falling apart, becoming more about making and spending money than a time of year to be thankful for what we have.
Every year people begin buying presents earlier and spending more while they’re at it. The National Retail Federation released a study that during the last 5 years of holiday sales in America, there has been an average spending increase of 3.5% every year, gifts making up almost 75% of those purchases.
It’s a never ending cycle of trying to outdo ourselves in the name of making the holidays great. Consuming more and more each year normalizes materialistic ideals and teaches them to younger generations, placing more value on owning objects than on intangible things like relationships.
It is easy to get trapped in a materialistic mindset. When you get something new, it makes you happy. Unfortunately, the novelty of the item and the happiness it gives you only lasts so long. Eventually, the need to consume rises again, and the cycle of consumption repeats itself.
Such a materialistic mindset is proven to take a toll on one’s overall well being. Tim Kasser, an expert in the relation between materialism and well being, shares that the more people endorse materialistic values, the less they feel satisfied with their lives overall. They are also more prone to suffer from anxiety, depression, stomach aches, and headaches.
Glorifying and perpetuating materialist behaviors sets society up for a downward spiral of more mental and physical health issues while piling on financial stress as our wallets are drained.
There are several anti-consumer, anti-materialist, and minimalist movements that tackle the issue of gift giving, encouraging people to shift the focus from gifts towards holiday experiences and social interactions. Gifts in turn are limited, oftentimes encouraged to be handmade, second hand, vintage, or locally made.
Gift-centered celebration is counter intuitive to the spirit of the season: to grow closer to those around us and to appreciate what we have. Gifts should be an add-on to the season, not the seemingly harmless main event it has become.