How do you feel about commercialized christmas?

On one hand, it's sad. On the other hand, everything else in our lives these days is commercialized, so it's a little unrealistic to wish Christmas wasn't.

I think most of the holidays stress comes from good intentions. I WANT to get my husband something nice for Christmas. It's a special time of year in our household, and I love him very much, and I feel like he deserves it. So I go get him something nice... then I see something else and get him two somethings nice. Then things start snowballing, and I'm stressed because I've gone $148.49 over our Christmas budget, and I haven't gotten anything for my sister yet.

A lot of people also try to out-do each other, or their neighbors, families, co-workers, friends, acquaintences. Then you have commercials on TV telling us that everything from McDonalds gift cards to Mercedes SUV's are "the perfect gift".

Of all the reasons to get stressed about Christmas, the worst (for me) is my mother. We draw names every year, and I ALWAYS (and I'm not kidding about this... there aren't that many of us, and this has happened EVERY year since we've drawn names) gotten my Uncle Wade, a man I hardly know and barely like. Also, I may see something that one of my sisters would LOVE, but it cost about fifteen dollars more than the 15 dollar limit my husband and I have for siblings. If I don't get it, I'll hate it, since I know she would really love it. If I do get it, I have to up the other sisters' gift, and since I have two sisters, and my husband has five siblings, that means everyone gets upgraded, which comes to around $100, just to avoid my sisters opening their gifts and one getting something that is more expensive than the other and someone getting offended.

Here are some things that have helped for us. Maybe you can try them, to get back into the right spirit to celebrate.

1. Start making your lists early. After years of stressful Christmasses and last-minute paycheck shopping trips, my husband and I know now who gets gifts (his brothers do not, since they don't like anything we get them anyway), how those are prioritized (my husband, myself, and our two kids; then grandparents, nephew/nieces, siblings, etc.). Set a budget that is both reasonable and something you're comfortable with (ours is twenty dollars on everyone outside our immediate family; since we shop at Walmart and Target, twenty dollars is reasonable, and I can usually find some pretty decent stuff.)

2. Do not shop after the third week in November. It is at this time that all stores shamelessly market Christmas, claiming that you simply must have this and your loved ones just couldn't live without that. If you shop throughout the year (and since you already know what you need, or at least who you need it for, this is pretty easy to do), you can take advantage of clearance racks, end-of-season sales, tax-free weekend (in Texas, anyway, for one weekend in August, clothes and school supplies are tax-free), and Labor Day blowouts.

3. Don't watch commercials during the Christmas season. C'mon, you don't really wanna watch them anyway. Since you've already got all your gifts, you have no reason to expose yourself to blatent commercialism.

4. Create positive memories of Christmas and the holiday season in general. Encourage your family to focus less on gifts and more on getting to have time together. Bake cookies, decorate the tree, teach your kids (if you have kids) different Christmas songs.

5. Don't do Christmas to impress. Personally, I love having a pretty Christmas tree up, and I love Christmas lights and stuff. My dad hates it, and there have been years he's skipped it in general when he lived alone. Feeling pressured into putting up a tree, spending money and time and getting cold hanging lights from the roof, or doing any other Christmas tradition will just make you more upset at "having" to do it.

6. Familiarize yourself with the season. Knowing why some of the Christmas traditions exist, or knowing traditions practiced in other parts of the world, can make it much more meaningful.

7. Turn your anti-commercialism outward, and give to the people in your community who need it. Work in a soup kitchen, man a Salvation Army bucket, sponsor a child on an Angel Tree, visit a nursing home or hospital. The commercialism of Christmas is based on an "I want" mentality at Christmastime. Helping or giving to others is the most positve way to counteract that self-absorbed attitude.

Christmas is traditionally a wonderful time, but you're right, commercialism has brought it to a point so low, it's tempting to blow it off altogether. I wouldn't suggest it. I would just suggest that you try to find what it used to be about, before it became the ultimate marketing strategy.

Happy Holidays!

For me it has been...I have not gone to any shopping places this year and if I'm watching TV I mute commercials. My family and friends all made a pact this year to keep it simple. No gift exchanges, except for the little ones (but much simpler than in the past). I am giving my teenage brother movie passes and my girlfriends with kids the same. Other than a painting I am painting for my grandmother it's just my husband I have to shop for. We decided this year to keep it to one gift under $75. I am hoping that over the next few years I can phase out Christmas all together, I've never been a big fan and now that I have done research on the origins and meanings of Christmas I am convinced to let it go completely. This year has been a huge refreshment from years past and I agree with you...I have noticed a lot more people slimming down on commercialized Christmas. The ads may be running but so many people are not shopping in excess like they did before.

Santa Clause (and frankly Jesus too) is the personification of the spirit of giving and it is this spirit that comes down our chimmey each year to warm our heart and our homes. Many of us with children go crazy trying to provide the greatest christmas ever for our kids each year - and that is something we all learn when we are small, it seems (because we repeat it continually generation after generation).

Originally Yule was celebrated in the north as a last chance to get together with friends and family before the long, dark, fiercely cold winter kept everyone apart for 2 or 3 months (or maybe as the mid point to help folks make it the rest of the way). Traditional gifts were candles, warm clothes and board games or decks of cards to while way the nights.

Certainly the manufacturers do a big push at the holidays, but that is largely because they don't even start to make a profit in a year until Black Friday after Thanksgiving - they are doing what they need to, to survive.

We, as consumers, must be the ones that show our own children what is reasonable and what is excessive - but even that changes from year to year as our incomes fluctuate. We, in our own families, homes and temples decide how to celebrate and what to teach our children (and our neighbors children) - and that is just as it should be. Merry Christmas and a wonderful new year to you and yours.

Peace!

People need to start taking responsibly for their actions and quit blaming stores for commercializing Christmas. Of course stores are going to advertise and put things on sale and go all out - it's called good business. But just because it's out there doesn't mean people have to buy it. All season long you hear people talking about how much money they spent and how hard it is - that's not the stores fault or advertisers fault. That's individuals fault for not being more responsible adults. People need to quit complaining and do what works for them AND their wallet - and yes it can be done to have a very Merry Christmas and not have to mortgage the house. To me it's not so sad to see "commercialized" Christmas as it is to see scrooges spending buckets of money and then blaming others for it. There's some good holiday spirit for you. People do it because they allow themselves to.

Just because others do though, doesn't mean you have to.

Yeah, it's pretty sickening. All the greedy corporate retail giants, along with our materialistic consumer society, have done their best to convince us that Christmas means we must give them tons of our hard earned money just so their executives can get their $100,000 bonuses. Pathetic, eh? It makes me want to barf. Christmas is about spending time with those who are important in your life...not blowing a months pay on some lame, generic gift from the mall for a distant relative you only see once a year.

As for me? I refuse to take part in it. My mom asked me what I wanted for Christmas and I told her to go to this awesome bakery nearby and get me a sweet roll. She insisted that she must spend more money than $2.99 for a sweet roll so I told her to write out a check as a donation for a local conservation group that I volunteer for. She still didn't get it. Oh well...

In my opinon Christmas is a annual festival that allow us to fulfill our greedy nature without the normal culturally induced guilt that would be associated with being greedy.

Christmas is a ritual designed to condition our actions and shape our opinions to ensure that we perpetuate the holiday.

Freeing yourself from the need to conform is a step towards living in truth. For me it is more difficult to enduring the pressure my family puts on me, than to stop participating.

I Hate it! The True reason is pushed to the side!

I have stopped feeling a long time ago

because people are crazy.