Merry Christmas, Everyone...Big or Small, Merry Christmas to ALL

©2017 by Raymond Alexander Kukkee

 

 Merry Christmas, Everyone! 

Christmas Then

When I was a  boy, Christmas came once a year. For a week.   As children, we waited, with abated breath, it seemed,  forever. With much anticipation and excitement building,  we waited for the winter holidays, the traditional Christmas concert, then the holidays, a few days free of school, time to build snowmen, play in mountains of snow, and go ice-skating. On real ice. Outside,  on the driveway turned into a rink, on a real community rink down the road, or  right down the bumpy ice on the Oliver Creek if it was frozen enough.
       We thawed out and waited.  We waited for Christmas Eve,  and  green and red-wrapped chocolates, sweet oranges from Japan, sparkling glass decorations and tinsel placed with care  on an always-real Christmas tree. In vivid imaginations, visions of  Christmas were brightly wrapped  secrets,   presents galore. Christmas cake. Sugar cookies. Twisted, rock-hard candy that looked like it was snipped with scissors, and candy canes striped like the North Pole where Santa lives.  
        We wondered how Santa drove the reindeer from the North Pole too,  as we eagerly listened  to George the Porter , Santa's helper broadcasting on the  radio in *Fort William  to see if Santa was making good time on Christmas Eve. We wondered how Santa could land on slippery, snow-covered steep roofs in the moonlight. How he ever squeezed down skinny chimneys safely.  Into burning fireplaces.  Without getting his white beard and eyebrows singed.
       We wished for new, shiny hockey  skates, hockey-sticks, and real shin-pads. Skis. New mitts. Stuff from the Eaton's and Simpson Sears catalogues.  Folding jackknives with pearl handles. New boots.  New bicycles. Lone Ranger and Roy Rogers belts, realistically-holstered noisy cap guns. Cowboy outfits for the boys. Sleighs, white figure-skates, dolls, ribbons and bows, new clothes, tiny furniture and dollhouses for the girls.  Everything was to arrive overnight by special delivery from Santa.   Imagine that, but only for a week.

And somehow, we knew what Christmas was really about. The birth of Christ.

Christmas Now

Zoom ahead decades. Too many decades. Now Christmas retailing begins on television right after Hallowe'en. And after Thanksgiving. And after Black Friday retailing madness. 50-70% off everything that was 70% overpriced all year. Profit. Business. Receiving instead of giving. Overspending. Paying the bills after the spending binge. The eternal headache of crowds of people in malls frantically searching endlessly for the perfect gift. 
     Is that what  Christmas was  intended to be?   Is it politically-incorrect to remind others of faith and belief in Christ?  The real reason for the season?   The passing of traditions is painful, but declining  faith, denial of faith,  the reason for the season  --is unbelievably sad.  Ouch. 
      But have no fear, we can still have OUR faith and traditions of Christmas, and enjoy them too. Not because of, but in spite of —modern trends and unwanted social manipulation.

The Solution.

I know it's hard to remember why we have Christmas, it's not very trendy, but forget 'spending' and shopping for a moment. Ignore advertising and commercial profit. Reawaken the imagination. Return to the dreams we once had. Is it a bad idea to push aside 'retailing' hype for a few days and dream?  No.   Is it old-fashioned and selfish to wish a week of Christmas inherited from older, better times instead of four months of mind-numbing commercials?  Wishful thinking?  No. It is human nature to expect better.
      Admittedly, we did not always receive the gifts imagined, the fancy toys coveted. Fact is, in reality, occasionally, in some  tough economic times, we had few gifts at all. But no matter; we still dreamed. The excitement of the season was alive and genuine with home-made gifts, paper decorations, the love of family, friends, and neighbours and snowball fights and snow forts and igloos.  The smell of fresh bread, pies, cookies and turkey baking early in the morning.
     The anticipation and surprises we did find under  quaint Charlie Brown  Christmas trees (taller, we remember)  made up for anything and everything. It was Christmas, after all, and we had music, excitement, love, visitors— and each other. Warm, crackling fires in the fireplace. Visions and imaginations unfulfilled were reserved for next year—and the ones after that. Immense and almost inexplicable satisfactory visions— for decades after that. 
Peace of mind and faith for the future—are the solution. Don't forget some eggnog. 
Merry Christmas everyone...big or small, Merry Christmas to ALL.

#

Is that Incoming I hear?
 

 *Now  'Thunder Bay', Ontario

Time for a Last Minute Christmas Reality Check

Christmas Shopping in Blister               photo by wlk photography

Bah, Humbug !    I have to run to the mall for some last-minute gifts.  With only a few days left before the big day,  procrastinators beware.    It really  is time to scurry around for those precious  gifts, so  hurry, beat the Dec. 24th   rush, listen to the nice Christmas music, and do that last minute shopping. Get the perfect gift.  Spend that money.
  Perhaps there really are some  lost opportunities not available  to you again until next year,  like those you missed on Black Friday, which, conveniently, is another artificial and  manufactured  retail trap for the gullible.
When you do  get to the mall, find a parking spot  and shop frantically,  are you being encouraged to panic and buy without thinking?  Are you  being taken advantage of by retailers using the psychology of Christmas and encouraged to spend more money than you can really afford  as we are increasingly encouraged to do  every year?
The “last minute rush” and panic is built upon guilt.  The Christmas season is pushed upon us  just after Hallowe’en, and retailers everywhere delight in pushing our buttons.  The psychology of Christmas sales.  A two-month shopping spree, the retailing game is  at it’s best and coincidentally, the most profitable. Don’t think, just spend.   Did your brother give you a better gift than you gave him last year?  Did you forget your cousin completely, so have to make up for it this year?   Did you  spend more on your son than on your daughter?   How about your sister?  Was  there an element of favoritism involved and the guilt that  lasted all year has to be “fixed” with that perfect gift this year? How about dear old Mom? Nothing is too good for Mom, everybody knows that.  
Did you change your mind at the last minute and decide “those” gifts were not expensive enough, and were not “meaningful enough"  so you need more?     Did your best friend buy you something extravagant and you have to make up for it this year?  Do you have to sell your soul for the lavish gift of your dreams for your significant other? Will it finally be a “perfect Christmas “ if you can only  spend enough?  
Are you running out of time? Buy this, grab that, and quickly....I can run  the credit card up and worry about it in January. Stop.
 Maybe it IS  time for a reality check.  
Let us slow down, breathe deeply and recognize that today’s Christmas retailing business is structured and  built only for commercial  profit.  Retailing  has virtually  nothing to do with promoting peace and goodwill or             “ helping you”.  Retailers are not  showing you  the real meaning of Christmas with  “warm and fuzzy” tear-jerking home-coming promotions  so common at this time of year. “The perfect gift solves everything” according to the retailer.  As long as it is expensive enough.
  “Merry Christmas, Mom”, as the returning,  surprised, and obviously  lonely  mother sees how beautiful the “perfect commercial products” from XYZ   have  made her home look.  Someone that has not bothered to visit all year  has showed up,  done the work and spent money they probably needed for their child’s clothing,  but so what?   It is the  retail glitz that counts. The warm and fuzzy moment.   Is that any better?  No.
 It plays upon the psychology of Christmas and the minds of the guilty.  Unfair practice?  Yes,  but retailing knows no bounds.
 In more relaxed times, Christmas had meaning.  There were small, individual hand-made presents, arts and carefully  crafted  items that were specially made for the delighted  individual to whom  they would be presented .  Perhaps they were made even  months prior to the big event. Only if one failed to be thoughtful,  constructive, and well organized would one have to dash to the market in chagrin at the last minute  to find something, anything, to “fill the gap” for the “missing”  present.  Buying a “store-made” gift was the exception, not the command performance  it is today.  “Home-made” gifts are shown to be  less glitzy than “bought” ones are, and promoted to be deemed of lesser value.
Lesser value? “Folk art”, hand-made gifts and objects  from 60 to 100 years old or older may  command prices in the tens of thousands of dollars today.   Compare that to a cheap ‘similar gift” made in Japan or China. No such comparison will be available 60 years from now, since the cheap import would have been long discarded as trash. 

The best price of the year is deep-discounted by desperate retailers trying to top off annual sales and maximize profit, -- not to do you any favours. How can a product be worth  $ 99.50 all year,  and then suddenly be a “once in a lifetime opportunity ” at $19.95 just because “Christmas” came along?  A little bit of skepticism is in order.   
The fact is, that gift you have the sudden urge to buy  was probably manufactured  in China for mere pennies, and the real cost of it may have been your job, or that of your neighbour. Think for yourselves.
It is Christmas, sure, there may only be a few days of retailer “magic”   left, but that really is enough  time to think for yourself.   Your smarter better half may even  love you even more when you show her the zero balance on your credit card come  January.    
I’m off to the mall.  Gotta get that perfect present.  I  could have made something nice instead. Why didn’t I think of this four months ago?

Bah, Humbug!