One Christmas shopper to another:
"Have you ever noticed how religion tries to take over more of Christmas every year?"
I am not opposed to Christmas, or the pagan winter celebrations that preceded it. They are all based on similar and good themes.
It is Consumer Christmas, a relatively new phenomena, that turns me off.
- In some countries, one-fifth of people go into debt to pay for Christmas gifts and festivities.
- Although eco-awareness is on the rise, half of people would buy the ideal gift no matter the cost to the planet.
Do business people believe in Santa?
Yes!
They believe in anything that brings in hundreds of billions of dollars in sales every year.
But the original St. Nick only brought modest gifts, and only to those that needed them.
Only about 7% of Americans surveyed said they weren't going to spend anything on Christmas.
That might be good, because often gifts are unwanted.
A European survey found that 15% of gift recipients were unhappy with the gifts they received last year.
10% couldn’t even remember their gifts!
Although half the recipients asked kept unwanted gifts,
- 25% re-gifted them to someone else,
- 14% sold them and,
- 10% took them back to a store.
In addition, 5% gave unwanted gifts back to the giver, a habit most popular with the British and the Dutch.
Some people simply threw them away.
Giving is good, but only when it is appropriate.
Unfortunately, Christmas Consumerism has no limits, and its excess is out of control.
The true meaning of the season is now buried under a mountain of buying and debt.
All of this when all we need is love, rather than more masses of junk.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Comments will be printed after moderation to eliminate spam. We are proudly a no buying, no selling website.
We enjoy reading all comments, and respond when time permits.
If you put a name to your comment we can all recognize you for your contribution.
Thank you for visiting and commenting.