The Truth About the Holidays

Merry Christmas. Happy Chanukah. Happy Kwanzaa. Merry Christmachanukwanzakuh. These are all was people greet each other for the holidays and all except that the latter are quite common. People have turned more to saying "Happy Holidays" because that is truly a universal saying for this time of year. "This Time of Year" has a new meaning now then it did in the past. In this post, I will address some of the major differences I have noticed in my years of life and whether they are good or bad.

The first thing is how extended the holiday time has become. A Local radio station in my town, 104.5 KDAT, has been playing Christmas music since November 1! I love Christmas music but two months is slightly excessive. It is worse because I don't think the station has much more than five days worth of music so by about day six the station is going down hill and by the end of the two months... *phew*... you never want to hear a Christmas song again. Another way is the advertisements and decorations that stores put out. I remember going into stores this year and seeing Santa and vampire statues out at the same time. Why must we advertise a Christmas sale beginning in October before we have stopped celebrating Halloween? The deals keep getting better until Christmas too so it isn't just one big sale that continues on and on.

The sales are pointless because I feel that in these hard economic times people don't want to think about Christmas for months. In my blog post about Halloween I explained that I feel like holidays are fading into the background and people don't care. I think this is shown in the fact that people aren't spending as much as they used to on gifts for their kids. Or at least they are not getting what they used to for that money because of the recession so they definitely are not buying more than they usually do. some holidays are fading away more than Christmas. I haven't heard much about Kwanzaa in years. Granted it wasn't a huge holiday before this but I used to at least see some recognition of it. Also, thanksgiving is being less extravagant to the point where it seems Black Friday is more celebrated than the holiday that makes it "the day after thanksgiving." Why do we do this to holidays that were only meant to bring us together? Christmas is expensive so it is more understandable that it would be easy to make it an understated holiday because people around the world have less money than usual. However, thanksgiving is not a gift giving holiday. The most expensive thing is the dinner and we should be happy that it brings family members that we haven't seen in a long time together in one spot more than we are worried about the cost of a turkey. And when it comes to Christmas, we seem to be loosing sight of what the holiday is truly about. I am not one to quote the bible or talk about religion on my blog but Christmas is about celebrating Jesus Christ's birthday. Whether or not you are christian, he was a person and most religions believe he did some pretty amazing things when he was alive. If we focus on that, it would be easier to not give as much for gifts and still be happy.

The issue is that kids want more every year than they did the last year and they want more expensive gifts too. I was recently at a third grade field trip and all the kids were asked what they wanted for Christmas. Answers like a DSi or an iPod or a computer were popular and one kid even said they wanted a motorcycle. The sad part is that most of those kids will actually get those gifts and I don't even have most of those things. Even parents that have very little money spend what they do have on Christmas presents for their kids because we can't deny kids what they want for some reason. If we could learn to get kids what they need and what is reasonable for them to have then we would have less trouble with our neglect of Christmas because of financial reasons.

One of the things that has bothered me is that Merry Christmas seems to be dying with the holiday. Because I go to a public school, the teachers can't say anything about religion. I used to go on a Christmas break from school when I was younger. Being that Christmas is a religious holiday, however, we can no longer go on a Christmas Break; it has to be either a Holiday Break or a Winter Break because those are non-religious terms. I disagree with this though. This isn't my bias because I am Christian, this is me saying that I would go on a Chanukah Break if that was when we got out or that was the main religion of the area but neither of those is true. America was founded by Christians and consiquently there are more Christians in this country. I don't think that saying Christmas Break is disrespectful to other religions or a way of trying to convert people to Christianity. It is clearly no coincidence that we get out on December 22 from school; It is three days before Christmas. If we got out from the beginning to the end of Chanukah then we would call it Chanukah Break. In our attempt to be fair to all religions because they all happen during this time we have created a general neutrality toward how we address them. If we could all learn to accept all religions we could all be happy saying our respective holiday greetings to others and not have to worry what they would think.