Just on the holidays, more than $31 billion dollars are spent in the U.S. only on gift cards, not including any other kinds of gifts. The U.S., and most other countries that celebrate Christmas or Hanukkah, have become obsessed with presents, and receiving gifts during the holidays. If you don’t, then it’s frowned upon. We have become such a materialistic society that not getting presents is taboo.
The U.S. alone will spend around $256 billion this holiday season ($805 per person, reported by www.aol.com, times 318.9 million people in the U.S.). That’s enough to pay off the debt to China in about 70 years if it was payed to the U.S. government instead (calculated from an estimated $256 billion per year paid). Obviously, though, your family is more important, right? You want your family to be happy, and so you’ll buy presents for them, and they’ll all be happy, while we’re in debt to China, and it’ll take more than a century to pay off that debt (I did the math for it). By that time, excuse me if I come off as a jerk, none of those gifts will matter. Something new will always outpace it and it will be thrown away, also increasing the pollution problem. If we could just consider that, pay off the debt to China, and just celebrate the holidays as a time to spend with family, and celebrate your life and what you already have, then we wouldn’t have any worries for the next century.
This materialistic way of thinking has led to the downfall of so many ancient societies. Germanic barbarian tribes became obsessed with their belongings, fought amongst each other, and eventually killed each other. In this process they took down other societies with them, such as Rome. What I’m saying is that eventually we’ll get to a point where we fight each other for anything.
All that materialism leads to is anger, selfishness, and conflict among members of a functioning society. If we could all just for a moment think about what Christmas or Hanukkah was originally about, why it was celebrated, we’d be such a peaceful world. Christmas is celebrating life and the birth of Jesus. Hanukkah was a miracle, the oil that lasted 8 days. Ramadan is the Muslim holy month of prayer and introspection, when they fast during the day to feel how others that are less fortunate must feel. Kwanzaa is the celebration of family, tradition, and culture, but neither Ramadan or Kwanzaa has been introduced to materialism or presents in our sense.
The presents were an introduction by Western culture, changing everything to feel special and unique. All these holidays were just about celebration of your family, of living another year and experiencing new things, and of the miracles that can happen. So just take the holidays to celebrate what you have, and not what you want. That’s what all these traditions are about, you have your family, your home, your food and shelter, so celebrate them.