Is Christmas about the money we spend? (Christmas and Commercialisation)

Member Name: MandyMinx

Product:	Christmas and Commercialisation
Date:	17/12/03 (344 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Fun , Family, Festivities

Disadvantages: Cost

Lead us not into temptation.

A line from the lords prayer. Somewhat apt now that the Christmas season looms over us once more.
Having watched as the shops in the local centre hurry to take down the pumpkins and masks that have adorned their shop windows for that last few months, only to see them replaced the very next day with a bold, yet garish Christmas theme, I am amazed at how soon we are hurried from one season to the other. Let's face it, get this one out of the way and the chocolate eggs that herald the coming of Easter will be back in the windows again.

It's a commercial world we live in, that's for sure, but who's fault is that? Is it the advertisers, who constantly brainwash us with the newest products and the latest gadgets? Would you blame the media who shove the rich and famous down our throats on a daily basis, showing us what we could have if we were rich enough? Is someone to blame? Have things changed that much?



I sat on a bus the other day and heard an elderly couple talking. They were discussing the amount of presents they intended to buy for their grandchildren and after moaning about the price of everything they came out with that age old saying......It wouldn't have happened in my day. We would have been grateful for what we got.
It got me thinking about my own children and the huge Christmas lists they had written a month earlier. It got me wondering whether my children were less grateful than we were as children.

I remember as a girl the thrill of Christmas morning, rushing down the stairs to dive upon the pile of presents in the corner of the room with my name on it. I was, and still am, the sort of person who loves Christmas for it's feel. I used to love the fact that dad didn't have to go to work and that the shops didn't open and the milkman always brought enough milk to feed the whole street the day before because he had the next couple of days off. I l
oved the smells from the kitchen and the fact that for once you were allowed to eat chocolate before your breakfast. I loved the fact that mother never moaned about the mess in the living room, even though it was piled high with wrapping paper and empty boxes. I loved the carol concerts and the special Christmas cartoons that used to start really early in the morning, so even though you had dived out of bed at a ridiculously early time, there was something to leave on the TV in the background. I loved the visitors that popped in unexpected. People who had really made an effort to come and see everyone. I loved the laughter as many of the adults had a little too much to drink and sang along to silly songs and hugged us and wished us Merry Christmas a hundred times.
I think I loved it most because it was a happy time.


I sat with the children this evening and an advertisement came on the television, you know, one of those 'You haven't done this one yet, but why don't you start paying for next years now' kind of ad. One of the kids groaned and when I asked them why, they replied that it was too early for such ads and "We haven't even got this one over yet!"
It made me wonder, hearing him repeat a phrase that I used often when I saw the same advert, what I was teaching my children about Christmas. I mean, the things that I do, the things that I comment on are shaping the way my kids see Christmas, from an adults point of view.

We sat together and I initiated a conversation about Christmas by asking them what they like best about it. Of course presents was one of the first things that was said. They are children, it's understandable, but then they talked of many of the things that I remembered and loved from when I was a girl. The sights, the smells. My daughter talked about the carols that were sang and then she said that sometimes on Christmas Eve and Christmas day the carols make her want to cry because
they are so beautiful and make her feel so sentimental. I had to smile because often they have the same effect on me. My son said he loved the Christmas dinner, with all the trimmings. He told me I made the best Christmas dinner in the world and again I smiled as I remember saying the same thing to my mother, many years ago. It made me realise that although I seemed to thinks so sometimes, the presents weren't everything to the children. They even remembered who's turn it was to put the fairy on the top of the tree this year.


So what makes it so different? Why do people see Christmas so differently now? When it comes to Christmas is there a generation gap?

No, I don't think so. I think it all comes back to this commercial issue. The advertisements and the media are a constant reminder to us of the cost of Christmas.

I think in the times before advertising became so prominent, people still 'kept up with the Jone's' so to speak. It was customary to buy as much as you could afford at Christmas, but I think in most cases this was because it felt good to make Christmas special for the kids. I know I would question whether I had bought the right gifts if my children didn't want to show them off when friends came round. You only have to remember comparing presses on the first day back at school to know that nothing has really changed in that area and let's face it, what we had then might not have seemed the same when compared to what the kids are getting now but I bet you if you ask your parents, they still spent every last penny getting you whatever was new on the market the way we do for our children now. Go back even further. Think of the father that stood for hours making the dolls house or the sled that would delight his child on Christmas morning. Do you think the effort meant less to his child than ours now means to our own children? No, I don't think so. I don't think that the effort I make to
make my kids happy at Christmas is any less either.
We all do, or did, what we can to make it special and I think there is no generation gap in that. It's something that has happened for generations.

There is so much more scope, so many more toy's to choose from now, but in twenty years time the computers and DVDs that we buy now are probably going to look as trivial as the Space hoppers and Chopper bikes that we coveted back then but I bet you parents will still be buying whatever's fashionable, even if they have to save for months for it, as we all often do.

I don't think we will ever stop trying to do the best for our kids, or trying to make them happy. It would be a sad world if we did.
I think what I am trying to say is that if you look under all the expensive looking toys, and fancy wrapping paper, things aren't that different than they were many years ago, we just do what we can with what we have, just like the generations before us. They didn't have the shops that we have or many of the toys available today. I bet you that there would still have been parents scrimping and saving to buy them for their children if there had been, for the same reasons we do and will continue to do, because there is nothing on this earth as beautiful as the smile of a happy child on Christmas morning.


I do think there is one major difference between Christmas for this generation and Christmas for ours and that is that with there being so much more media access and such a build up to Christmas, our children are more aware maybe of the financial burden that it puts upon us. I think we have to remember to try and keep it special for the kids. I don't want my children to remember the dark circles around my eyes as I struggled to make everything just right, or the hours I have spent trying to work out what we can and can't afford this year. I certainly don't want the kids to feel guilty for what they have rec
eived. I want them to remember Christmas as a happy time, when we had fun and ate too much.



Please remember that the presents aren't the only thing that make Christmas the special time it is.



Thanks for reading.

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