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Monday, November 27, 2006
Manufactured Drama, Part 1I never do the Black Friday thing because I hate crowds, especially crowds of grasping, mannerless conformists. Not that I'm saying everyone who shopped Friday was that. But I think you know what I mean.
However, last week I got an ad in the mail informing me that Kohl's would have for sale the exact video game and video game accessory that I was planning to buy for my children for xmas. Also, all their boots would be half off, and I've been wanting a pair of brown boots. So I reasoned that Kohl's probably wouldn't be too crowded on Black Friday, and I decided that I would go.
We didn't get to bed on Thanksgiving until around 2:30 AM. I like my family, and we have fun when we get together. Therefore, we all got together and drank and ate and made fun of each other until the wee hours. So I was in no condition to wake up in time to be at Kohl's at 5 AM. Instead, I woke up at 9:30.
I went to Kohl's alone. My boyfriend and my kids waited at home with sugar plums (or World of Warcraft quests) dancing in their heads. The Kohl's parking lot was disorganized. Inside, the first thing I saw was several displays of picked-over sweater. Signs everywhere advertised special sales for this two-hour period only. A single line stretched from the cash registers in front, all the way to the back of the store.
After searching fruitlessly for a while, I asked a Kohl's employee where the PS2 games were. He seemed to have a hard time understanding what I meant. I had the impression that he wasn't normally a floor worker. It looked like a lot of people hadn't shown up to work that day, and maybe they'd temporarily promoted this guy from stocking. However, he eventually indicated that the games were somewhere in the men's department.
Kohl's had (cleverly?) interspersed all the advertised electronics throughout the clothing departments in the hopes that, while searching for my video game, I'd be irresistably tempted by the socks and stepped-on sweaters all around. Instead, I was upset by the lack of video games. Either there weren't any Desired Game II's around, or else I was too stupid to find them.
I started looking at the purchases of the people in line, to see if any of them had Desired Game II. No. No one had that, and no one had the portable DVD's advertised, either. Instead, I saw people standing in an multiple-hour-long line to buy: a Barbie dreamhouse. A palette-load of no-name video games. A thing that looked like Desired Game II but that was, to the trained PS2 habit enabler's eye, definitely not Desired Game II. Sponge Bob slippers. I'm assuming that stuff was marked 40% off.
The line reached its midway point near the shoe department. With one glance, I saw that there wasn't a single pair of brown boots in Kohl's worth waiting in line for an hour to buy. Not even for half the price.
I left. Then, instead of going to Hobby Lobby to buy a marked-down fake xmas tree, I drove back home. That was enough Black Friday for me.
In my car, I listened to a local AM station headquartered in one of Houston's poorer neighborhoods. It was playing a talk show about managing money. The hosts were talking to a local car dealership owner, but the conversation had tangented into imploring listeners not to believe the Black Friday hype. "I see people running around buying gifts they can't afford for people they don't like," said one of the hosts. "I saw a woman driving around with a car full of purchases, and she didn't even have working AC. She had to roll her windows down," said the dealership owner. (It's Houston. Yes, we need our cars to have working AC in November.)
Anyhow. Listening to them made me sad, because I knew they were telling the truth. And I knew half their listeners weren't listening, and would be spending money they didn't have, anyway. And for what? Long lines of gifts you settled for, at 40% off, at 20% interest. Gifts nobody will remember.
Manufactured Drama, Part 2
This morning on the radio - both on NPR and on the local conservative AM station that gives traffic and weather reports every ten minutes - the talkers were talking about Cyber Monday.
See, last Friday was Black Friday, and today is Cyber Monday. That means, allegedly, that shoppers who went unsated at brick-and-mortar stores over the weekend are supposed to shop online in record numbers today.
"Don't be surprised if the Internet is sluggish today," warned one guy.
I call hype-mongering. Why would people who shop online pick today to do their shopping? I've been browsing gift ideas for weeks now. Why should I believe people who believe that the whole Internet would somehow run slower today, even if people were shopping more?
And yet, why do I know in my heart that there were people listening to those stories and thinking, "Oh my God, I'd better hurry up and buy stuff online"?
To NPR's credit, they clarified that today is dubbed Cyber Monday because it was the biggest online shopping day of last year. But they said most people just browsed and didn't buy.
This hype is killing my buzz.
The more people hype stuff, the less I want to do it. Seriously, I don't even want a Christmas tree this year. I mentioned that last entry, but since then I've been dwelling on it, crystallizing the idea in my mind.
I don't want to buy a fake tree. Fake greenery is not the kind of thing I buy, no matter the season.
I wanted to buy a real tree, even though it would've been a pain. But now, I don't even want to do that. What's the point? What does it mean? Lately, nothing.
Last night we watched Father of the Bride on cable, and I thought of how dumb American weddings are. Every time I see someone plan a wedding, I think about how many of our customs have no meaning or, worse, have offensively arcane ones. That's not a new thought, I know.
But now I'm starting to feel the same way about Christmas. What's the point of having a dead tree in my house? We're so far removed from the German pagans who invented that tradition. Why should we put fake reindeer and snowmen in our yard, when we're driving our cars with the AC full blast?
When I was a child, Christmas meant two things to me. One: Christmas pageantry. I would sing and dance and dress up for audiences, and their applause would mean the world to me. Two: Free stuff. We were poor, so free stuff was a major incentive in our lives, and December meant more free stuff than usual, if we played our cards right.
Thank God we don't have to live like that anymore. Also, I no longer go to church just so I can sing.
Obviously, if I want to celebrate Christmas, I need to find out what it means to me and my family, and concentrate on fulfilling those meanings. Last year I asked the kids what their favorite part of the holiday was, and they told me it was opening their stockings in the morning. Good, I said, because I like filling their stockings at night. In fact, the part I like best now is giving gifts to my friends and family, because I love them and I don't get a chance to show that often enough. The other thing I like is hanging out with my family. We'll do that, then. Good for us.
If we had more money, I'd buy presents for poor kids every year. It would make me happy to give kids the same crazy, bittersweet, materialistic pleasure that I used to hope for every year.
Is there anything about the winter holidays that has special, hype-free meaning for you? Tell me, please. Share with the class. 9:00 AM #
Comments:
Well.What I do is take my two kids to buy Christmas presents for kids who are less fortunate. They get a huge kick out of buying something for "the kids they don't know".
Also, we bake a birthday cake for Jesus. It seems cheesy, I guess, but it's actually very sweet.
Volunteering helps me. Giving back and all that.
Beyond that...eh, we just don't get caught up in the hype. I didn't shop on Black Friday, never do. We don't buy a lot of gifts. We try to focus on our family and what we have and it really helps.
# posted by
That Chick Over There : 10:02 AM
When I was a kid I liked the sense of mystery and anticipation. It's such a pagan holiday, all about lights and trees and singing and the idea of waiting. The Catholic pageantry added a lot to that.
As an adult, a lot of it is about finding presents for people I like. When I make time for that, I really enjoy doing it. I also love the holiday decorations. I love the big obnoxious trees in the malls, the lights on trees, the Santas, all of it. It's a manufactured, fake cheer, but I think there's an honest goodwill behind it. People decorate their houses and stuff; they don't have to, but they do it, and they're doing it for other people, really. It's a nice gift.
# posted by
Nyarly : 12:44 PM
Ever since I've had a job of my own that enabled me to have some extra money instead of spending it all on rent and gas and ramen noodles, I've really enjoyed the abundance of Angel Trees and other anonymous donate-y things around Christmas. I really like it when I find some kid who wants something a little out of the ordinary. I had a blast shopping for cowboy boots for this one kid last year...
For me, I like the chance to spend time with family and friends that we ordinarily don't spend, at times that we don't ordinarily see one another, like during the day in the middle of the week. It feels like playing hooky only everyone is doing it. And the lights and the music and the cookies. Of course, there's an awful lot of intrafamilial angst that goes on every year over some thing or other, but it's like Clark Griswold says -- it's all part of the experience. Even though we are really far removed from the origins of a lot of the traditions, they've become OUR traditions. That one horrible cheesy 1970's Christmas record that we always play while we decorate the tree until someone breaks and demands we switch it out for something less painful. The fact that we always end up (on purpose?) with a tree that has the longest, gangliest top branch and dad forgets (on purpose?) to trim it before the tree is set up and so someone ends up holding the rickety-est kitchen chair ever while someone else tries to attach the star to it. Baking that horribly complicated fruitcake that I never bake any other time of the year and nearly slicing off a finger in the process... things like that.
# posted by
jam : 2:05 PM
We used to have birthday cake for Jesus when we were little too. I think it was my parents' way of subtly reminding us it isn't just about Santa.
We also celebrate St. Stephen's Day (Dec. 26). My dad went to seminary, and since priests always have to work on Christmas, they don't get to spend it with their families, so a lot of them celebrate St. Stephens, which is even better because your friends are done with their family celebration so they can come as well, which makes it seem even more apropriate because everyone you love can be there even if they aren't family.
# posted by
lumenatrix : 3:58 PM
Long time reader, first time writer, blah blah love your blog. :-)
In my family, we have several small nativity scenes under several trees, and the children all take turns placing the Baby Jesus in his manger bed on his birthday.
We have almost exclusively "personal" ornaments on my mother's tree.. My tree at home is full of pretty-yet-storebought ornaments, but at Mom's it's all about the silver glitter star I made in the fourth grade or a photo ornament of my brothers and grandfather in 1983.. things like that. Ornaments bought as souvenirs on family vacations and my mother's college European vacation with her girlfriends.
It's nice, really, to listen to Dean Martin singing "O Holy Night" and reminisce about the sand dollar from our Girl Scout trip or my grandmother's glass hummingbirds.
I'll shut up now, just wanted to share.
Seriously do like your blog. :-)
# posted by
Samantha : 6:11 PM
Two things:
1. Baking christmas cookies, and lots of them. We make chocolate crinkles, snickerdoodles, fudge, peanut butter cookies with the hershey kiss on them, lemon bars, cathedral windows, and a couple of others that rotate in and out each year. We save some for ourselves, and we wrap up bundles and give them to all of our friends instead of gifts. My mom and I would spend like two entire days in the kitchen making dough, rolling it into balls in sugar, baking (and sneaking a few to eat!) It was really good quality time together.
2. Lights on the Christmas tree. We always had a fake tree, and I didn't really care. But, putting lots and lots of colored lights on it, and having them be on for a little while after we turned the lamps out in the den, while I would get ready for bed and stuff was awesome. The entire half of our house would be purple and orange and green and blue and red, and I just really, really loved it. I'm also pretty fond nowadays of thinking of how my dad and I would grumble at each other as we tried to untangle the lights and make sure they all worked, etc. I just think it's funny now.
It's weird that I used to get so excited about the crap I was going to get, but now when I look back, that's the stuff I think about. A couple of notable Christmas presents stand out (like the time I got one of those 500 experiment chemistry sets... But, of course, I'm working on a PhD in biochemistry now... so you might say that was a life-altering sort of thing...). But, honestly, it's those little things that stood out instead of the presents and commercialism and crap.
# posted by
Jeffytown, USA : 1:36 AM
Chick: I don't think it's cheesy to bake a birthday cake for Jesus.
Where do you volunteer? I want to volunteer, sometimes, but it's kind of hard to just jump in and do it if you haven't done it lately, isn't it? Like, I want to go visit old people and read them crappy novels aloud, but I imagine I'd have to get a background check done, first, to assure them I'm not some weird old-people fetishist. (Not that there's anything wrong with that.) What kind of volunteering are you doing this year, and how did you get into it?
Nyarly: Good points, re the underlying goodwill. And I love the big 2-story corporate trees, too.
Jam: Good points. :)
Lumenatrix: That sounds pretty cool. Did y'all do all the other saints' days, too, or just that one?
Samantha: Thank you for reading. That's sweet - putting the Baby Jesus to bed. I like that. And we used to totally have the special ornaments, too. Mind you, I don't know what the hell happened to them after I went to college and got married, but yeah, a build-up of personal ornaments rocks.
Jeffytown: The xmas tree lights do rock. That's the only reason I kind of still want to have one. And, yeah, you're so right about the memories not being the gifts.
I wonder what my kids will remember about our Christmasses? Me bitching, probably. :)
# posted by
Gwen : 9:59 AM
Hi again,
There is a rescue mission near my house. I called them up and asked if they needed help. They did. So I started going and serving meals.
The first time I did it, honestly, it freaked me out a little. Because here I am, not homeless and all, and I thought, "OMG. They are going to think I'm all trying to be better than them!"
Um, well no. I'm a big dumbass. They were really nice and thanked me for giving them sweet tea.
So that was cool.
Then, I heard about an organization that does a toy program for disadvantaged kids. It's awesome really. Basically, each kid gets $200 and you go with them to Kmart and walk around with them and help them buy Christmas gifts. My husband and I and both our kids all went together. Some of these kids, it was sad...they had obviously been coached by their parents as to what to buy. They were requesting things like, you know, toasters. Which is fine, but the point was so the kids could get some toys and clothes. That turned out to be super-rewarding too...I helped a 10 year old girl buy her first bra! :)
Other things I do pretty much all year around. Habitat for Humanity and the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. Oh, and I'm a Girl Scout leader too, which believe me, is a total labor of love. Girl Scouts are really big on community service. I have a friend who is an administrator at a nursing home and so I called her and asked if I could bring the Girl Scouts to sing little songs for the old people. She was thrilled.
Seriously, just jump in. Call some nursing homes and say you want to read to the old people. Chances are, they will be thrilled.
PS: I would also like to second Samantha. I've been reading your blog since 1998. Since way back when you wrote funny things about being a trailer-living housewife and the funny things you did at Wal-Mart.
I heart your blog. I hope you find that Christmas spirit you are looking for.
# posted by
That Chick Over There : 6:46 PM
Gwen,
You could sing at nursing homes or retirement centers. They would really love and appreciate it. I played my flute occassionally at a nursing home. The nurses would direct me to patients who they thought would benefit most. An ensemble I had also put on a mini-concert for the residents. They never bothered with background checks. They were always just very happy and appreciative to get some entertainment in.
Vicki
# posted by
Vicki : 3:00 AM
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