So we are a few days out from Christmas and hopefully everyone had a wonderful Christmas day. If you don't celebrate Christmas, hopefully you had a wonderful weekend. Christmas to me is not all about presents and what I get from other people, it is more about the time I get to spend with family. Do we give exchange gifts with each other? Absolutely, but it is not an enormous ordeal with seemingly hundreds of gifts being passed. I know my wife and I typically get one gift for each person in the family. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy getting presents, but I think I enjoy it more because I don't know what I am getting. When asked months before Christmas what I want, I always struggle to come up with an answer. There is nothing that I need, and I don't want to ask for something that I will not use on a regular basis. Often times, I just don't give my family an answer as to what I want for Christmas. I find it is much more enjoyable on Christmas day to get presents and not know what I am getting. The whole experience takes on a different air when you don't have expectations as to what is hidden underneath the wrapping paper. Trust me, it is quite a change from when I was younger and made up lists for Santa Claus as to what I wanted for Christmas. Even when I was younger, though, my parents made sure that I knew I was not going to get everything I wanted for Christmas. Now, even if I didn't receive any presents, I would still enjoy the day.
So what happens with all the presents we receive for Christmas. At this point in my life, all the presents I get are practical and I know that I will utilize every single one of them on multiple occasions. However, there was a point when I was younger where a fair amount of presents would get put into a pile in my room and maybe get used once if at all. It seems like many people fall into the trap of getting too many presents and having a good number of them sit around gathering dust. These days, many of them don't even get a chance to gather dust, they get wrapped with a gift receipt attached so that the recipient can go exchange that gift for something they want more. It seems that for a lot of people, no matter what they get, it is never good enough. If they get lucky and get a few different presents from the same store, they can go exchange all of them for one that they really want and didn't get. What is the point in getting presents for people if they are just going to exchange them later or even return them. Perhaps if everyone received fewer presents, they would be more likely to use the ones they get and less likely to go and return or exchange some of them. Furthermore, there would be less clutter around the house following Christmas if fewer gifts were given. Some people may counter and say, "But how can I not buy my children what they want for Christmas?" Quite simple in my mind. If they were able to survive a whole year without the items they want for Christmas, than they can survive without getting them for Christmas.
Presents are fun, but not necessary. We shouldn't feel the need to buy tons and tons of presents for people around the holidays, yet we do. Every year, there are more and more items that we need to buy for people. We feel the pressure to buy when we receive a gift from someone we didn't buy a present for. We feel pressure from family telling us what they want for Christmas. We feel even more pressure from the bombardment of commercials on television letting us know about the fantastic deals to be had and the wonderful new gadgets out this year that are "must haves". For all those people who go "present crazy" out there, I feel sorry for you. I feel sorry that your wasting money on trying to buy people's happiness. I feel sorry that you feel the need to buy so many presents for others. I feel sorry that you will have to deal with all the unused presents afterwards. Lets all make an effort for next year and not tell anyone what we want for Christmas. Lets make it a guessing game which is much more fun and actually makes people think about what a good present would be for someone else. I know most people will either forget by next year or simply think its a stupid idea, but hey, its worth it to try and get people to change. Perhaps the best and most fun way of doing things would be to do a secret Santa amongst family. Everyone picks a name out of a hat and they only have to buy that one present. It saves everyone money and everyone knows they are only getting one gift. That doesn't even go over in my family however, so good luck getting it going in yours. Looking back, hopefully everyone could see past the presents on Christmas day to the true present, that of being with family with a roof over your head. Lets all count our blessings and remember how fortunate we really are.
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