If you must do Christmas the way the commercials want you to, try to buy locally and avoid the chain stores. Support your local economy, by shopping where the money stays local, feeding a family instead of a global conglomerate. Just a thought for those of you who are already a-tingle with Christmas fever.
I’m personally not a big Christmas person. I love the holiday itself, especially the pagan parts, and the local mythologies that have been sprinkled in. Winter elves, Sinter Klaas, evergreen boughs, holly, mistletoe, these are all local pagan winter solstice/ winter saints holiday traditions. I love them all.
Anything that symbolizes hope during dreary times, I love.
What I hate, and why I am now gravitating AWAY from Christmas more and more, is the sheer ridiculousness of the vastness of the freaking out that people do.
Black Friday wasn’t a thing when I was a child. And now the Christmas rush is starting even BEFORE Thanksgiving. On my birthday (all saints day) there were already stores putting out Christmas decorations.
Some stores didn’t even wait for Halloween to be over. The Christmas section was already up at Wally world while I was shopping for Trick-or-treater loot. That has to be wrong. Even to Christians. I’m assuming even the hardcore Christmas lover is now seriously doubting whether Christmas really needs to start three months early.
So, here’s my prescription for the over-commercialization of Christmas. BOYCOTT the big stores. Shop somewhere local, somewhere unique.
Stay away from malls and stripmalls and big huge soul-less stores. Go find the local toy store and shop there. Go give your money to the one remaining local grocery store or local drug store that hasn’t gone under and find your gifts there.
Some people tell you to donate to charity in their name. Yeah, that’s totally unrealistic with kids. But if you shop local, you’ll stop throwing money into the problem that is sucking up the soul of Christmas, taking all that is special right out of Christmas.
Shop local, shop small, and you’ll maybe help undo some of the soulless corporate takeover of your apparently favorite holiday.
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