"christmas can sometimes seem a great shakedown, in which you are coerced into buying presents for people you don't really know. the clerk's perennial question "how much do you want to spend?" forces the christmas shopper into assigning an economic value to every relationship. and it can be very embarassing if the person for whom you have bought a gift turns out to have spent either much more or much less than you."
-i want that! how we all became shoppers-

deck the malls with boughs of holly. my favorite christmas tradition? not getting presents for anyone. yes, i love it. it really frees you from the pressures of christmas. while everyone else is fighting crowds or lines, i can sit on the sidelines and snipe at bad holiday decorations and frazzled shoppers. you could say that this is very ungenerous of me, but i think it's quite practical. the grinch wasn't small hearted, he was just practical minded. he wasn't into the spirit of christmas, so what? don't we have enough holidays already?

from september until january we're bombarded with holiday spirit. not to mention the one major holiday per month leading up to september. it's too much. it's hard to get all jazzed up about something that comes around so often. i'd settle for bi-annual holidays. keep new year's annual, alternate all the rest. don't you think we just do too much forced celebrating anyway? sure christmas is the celebration of jesus' birthday, but give me a break, he won't mind if we skip every other year. it would be much more meaningful that way. you have to insert some negative space in the holiday calendar to fully appreciate it.

there is of course, the economic impact of the holidays (one-third of all retail spending is done during the two months leading up to and after christmas), which we need to keep in mind. but i'm sure we can figure out how to splurge throughout the year so that our award winning american economy will keep on churning.

on a sidenote, did you hear this stuff about the religious right threatening to boycott target (and other merchants) because they substitute "holiday" and other generic terms for "merry christmas" in their advertising? the worst part of it is that target decided to back down and use more religion specific phrases. score one for god, i guess -- not to mention money.

to be honest, part of the reason i don't indulge in christmas present shopping or exchanging has traditionally been that it's just too expensive. sure, tokens of appreciation were easily bought when you were in high school and you could get people some socks or random knick knacks ("a ceramic blue anteater! thank you!"), but now you know when you're giving junk. and giving junk sucks. as with talking, you realize as you get older (hopefully) that usually it's better to not talk unless you have something to say. i like to apply that principle to giving. why give unless you actually have something worthy?

i'm not sure how i feel anymore about the "i like to give things when i see stuff that fits a certain person" line anymore. although i can come up with no rational reasons against it, i just think this expression is used too much. but maybe only because it's valid.

one of the things i appreciate about my friends is that we don't indulge in gift giving at all. birthdays, christmas, festivus, whatever. presents are given on a need to give, have stuff to give basis -- which can oftentimes be never but that's awesome too. there's no pressure to give or to reciprocate. of course, i guess if you receive more often than you get, then you'll stop getting because that's how it works. but if you give only to receive, then you're fucked up anyway right?

merry christmas everyone.

"santa's coming down the chimney derives from the story of saint nicholas, bishop of myra in what is now turkey, who threw bags of gold through the windows (or down the chimney) of a poor family's house so the daughters would not have to become prostitutes."