The Sears Christmas Catalog

I tried to cancelled Christmas this year.  I told my relatives I usually buy for that my Christmas to them was the money they would have spent on my gift.  Amazingly, we all rapidly decided that gifts for 4 small children was to be the extent of our gift sharing.  We would get together, eat food, talk, watch our 4 little children open their gifts and wish each other goodwill and happiness, etc.
For the next few days I felt as if I had won the lottery or paid off my mortgage, then I realized it was just relief at not having to find a dozen gifts that would be not well liked and not worth much less than the ones given to me by their recipients.  I wasn't going to have to increase my credit card debt, because the conversation among the parents of those 4 young children consisted of "I looked in his/her room and am going to have to clear out a bunch of toys to make room for this years Christmas gifts"  They were talking among themselves about taking the money they usually spent and putting it toward a family vacation, (I'll stay home and watch the house/dogs/cats/plants, that is a movie I have lived, I t-shirt I already own)  The oldest grandchild was insisting in no uncertain terms that she only wanted specific clothes items, no toys because she felt sad for the toys that didn't get enough attention.
Christmas is such a tradition, a tie to childhood, I wasn't sure whether to be elated or devastated so I decided to examine the memories.  And yes, the "buy more every year" was started by my own parents, and continued throughout their lives and was taken up by my sister and I.  By last year, it bore little resemblance to those mornings of my childhood when the tree seemed to be exploding with gifts.  Old pictures confirm that what seemed alot, was 2 stockings and a bunch(probably 5) of cheap unwrapped toys from Santa and 1 big gift each. There was usually only 2 gifts for each of my parents, one to each other, one from the kids--jointly given.  If more, it was homemade and not from an expensive kit.  The extended family was even smaller, each child receiving 3 gifts--one from each nuclear family, and that was ended when one branch had a population explosion and changed from name drawing to just a meal, to an annual Christmas Card to those you still had an address for.

Last year, at the extended family event that my sister and I have continued since our children grew up and started their own, there was a ring extending out 6 feet from the edge of the tree and all the gifts were bagged up in in multiples to keep it simpler.  I received 20 gifts.  I spent way beyond my means, felt great concern that I didn't give enough, and that no one liked their gifts and that I would never pay off the credit debt before next year rolled around..

I did a little research and discovered that the huge Christmas gifts on Christmas morning was not very common.  Rich Victorian children got some things, farm kids might get a box of crayons or a new homemade dress or doll.  Poor kids hoped for a piece of candy and some fruit and nuts.  By the depression, whatever had been passing as a tradition was decreased to a tree and homemade whatever.
So why did we think that way?  When did we decide that we needed to have more of everything for Christmas for it to be a happy holiday?
At the arrival of the annual Sears Christmas catalog.  The last one I saw was called the Wish Book---how magical is that.
When it arrived in the fall we would each spend time with it.  We would make lists of toys and clothes and shoes and foods that would make our lives perfect and fill our hearts with joy. We would present our lists and be told to mark the top 2 or three, then spend more time with the catalog trying to decide what was the most important.
Amazingly, we never knew we needed most of the stuff on our lists until the catalog arrived.

By the 1980's, the number of utterly amazing Christmas catalogs was uncountable.  So much stuff, so little time.  As an adult I knew there was no one that could afford to give me most of it, but the memories of the avarice and acquisitiveness was fond.  It was like the treasure-finding dream...and the 80's were by their nature avaricious and acquisitive; the profession of choice was entrepreneur, the shows were about stinkingly rich families that would do anything to get more.  We, as a nation were doomed to gross consumerism and one-upping the Jones'.

In 2008, all of our over-indulging, overly wasteful, credit-card addicted ways became a problem.  It was a depression not unlike the one our parents had survived complete with insane politics and an awful war that was expected to fix the problems.  Our parents were gone, our gardens grew only grass that we paid someone to mow and someone else to fertilize and we watered incessantly because just like the previous depression where our area was called the dust bowl, we were in a drought.  Some people lost jobs, but if we didn't lose them, our wages didn't go down, they just didn't go up.  Our benefits became weaker, our portion to pay for them went up.  Gas went up so everything that was trekked in went up.  If we were buying a house, that stayed the same, or we refinanced and it went down, as interest was way down.  But renters paid more and more for less and less, and getting a mortgage was now tougher than ever because no lenders wanted to risk default for less than 4% interest coming in.
But while we bought more economical cars, and got used to heating the house to 68 degrees F. and cooling it to 78 degrees F. and even started trying to eat better so we didn't have to buy a wardrobe a size bigger every year (eating better is only cheaper if you cook, cheap eating out is always fattening) ,we tried to keep that insane Christmas tradition.

I, for one, look forward to not feeling stressed out by the Holidays.  I do like Christmas Cards, though, with a nice letter or maybe a photo.  The perfect Christmas gift.