Christmas Grinch or Wise Spender

Is it me or did Christmas start in July already? Was it Julymas this year? There are all these over-priced holiday decorations out and people seem to be buying like the world is going to end on the 25th of December. And if freaks me out. 

Consumerism, by definition, is the belief that it is good for people to spend a lot of money on goods and services, but the fact is: we are lulled into believing that the concept that an ever-expanding consumption of goods that is advantageous to the economy. 

And perhaps it is, but where does it stop? 

In the run-up to Christmas Day shops are crowded, queues snake through malls, all trying not to forget to buy that present for that person they met once in a grocery store. It’s ridiculous.

I don’t believe in this kind of flagrant spending. And I’m not the only one. I have a group of friends, who as a family, never do Christmas, because it’s too expensive and they say what they end up with is junk – cheap junk at that. So what they do instead is say, if there’s something that they really want, instead of spending fifty rand on fifty people, which is R2500, they would spend that amount of money on themselves and say to everybody that they would have bought something crappy for, “Thank you very much for my beautiful gift.” 

People might say this is a little “Scroogey” but would you rather have a soap on a rope, a trio of flying ducks made out of cheap ceramic, a fifty rand hair flat iron, which is not going to last more than two days, underwear in three different colours and so on, or would you rather have one really nice gift that you have chosen and you are happy with? 
Part of the psychology behind the whole rampant spending over the holidays is definitely competitive, so you want to be able to one up the next person. And the post-mortem gift conversation is the best part of it; when you get to go home and say, “Darling, did you see what James and Sally bought Sue and Peter. It was the most tacky thing, darling!” 

But there is some value in it. If you’re the recipient of the really tacky gift, it opens up a whole world of opportunity in re-gifting. But what’s really important if you’re a strategic re-gifter is, you have to make a note of the Scrooges in your network. So the people who gave the really tacky gifts will have to be the recipient of the next tacky gift. And the circle continues... And there a good chance that the tacky gift that they gave was a re-gifted tacky gift. So in an ideal world there would just be a finite number of tacky gifts and within your circle, they would just move around. Infinitely. It’s like pass the parcel, but on a grand scale. 

The fact is, there are a lot of crafty people out there, but I don’t mean that in the shrewd sense of the word, I’m talking about people who make stuff – arts and crafts – who are going back to a kind of homemade, back to basics thinking, and I believe that there should be a whole movement towards this sort of thing. It should become a trend to go back to more simple, and more importantly, local, gift ideas. 

So this rampant consumerism over this holiday period angers me to no end, because by the time you get to January, you have no money left for anything else. And everyone’s New Year’s resolution is to save more and work harder to pay off the credit card debt! You get yourself into all this debt over one day? 

Also, you need to ask yourself what the meaning behind gifting during this time is. Is it symbolic of the Biblical three wise men who came to see the Baby Jesus and brought him gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh? So why don’t we just give those three things? Take all the choice out of it. Why do you need that Prada handbag and will sulk if you don’t get it for Christmas? If you’re celebrating Christmas, you should only be allowed to give those things. 

And what message are we sending out to children as well. It’s a sad day when kids are perusing toy catalogues and “booking” their gifts in advance. And so the cycle of living beyond your means continues. And if the parent can’t afford that, there’s a fair amount of hysteria around it. 

And don’t even get me started on buying the biggest Christmas tree in the forest, or wherever you buy a Christmas tree from. The fact is, the Christmas tree is not even a Christian thing. When the Roman Empire was struggling between its Pagan roots and the rise of Christianity, Constantine decided to merge the traditions, and now we have a Christmas tree and gifts around it. Nothing to do with the birth of Jesus or why Christmas is celebrated. Yet, hundreds, if not thousands, of rands are forked out each year for these trees. 

At the end of the day, consumerism is not wrong; I mean we have to support the economy. What I am saying is that you have to do it within your means! So you don’t have a situation where your staff comes to you all dropped lipped wanting to get paid early, or wanting a loan or an advance on their salaries because they overspent in December. 

So perhaps you forego the three turkeys, stuffed with three ducks, stuffed with three chickens and eat to lascivious excess. Do something simpler. Hotels have Christmas menus that go up to R500 per person. That is a ridiculous amount of money to spend on one day.

And, in my opinion, by any means, it should not be so!  

You can email Terence Pillay at [email protected] or Follow him on Twitter @terencepillay1 and interact with him there.    

In case you missed the Good Bad and The Ugly this morning, listen to it here: