Avoiding Holiday Excess

The Christmas holiday tends to mean busier stores, holiday decorations, more traffic, and general excess these days. The materialism of the holiday season makes many, including myself, very wary. When I started receiving and onslaught of mail about Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales, I began preparing myself for the inevitable. But just when I entered into one store in the mall two weeks before Thanksgiving and heard uninspired, recycled holiday music, I left sooner than I expected because it was too much. Before I did, one of the employees told me that he has had to hear the same soundtrack since the beginning of November, I couldn’t help but tell him I felt sorry for him; he accepted my pity with a tired laugh and a shrug.

It’s not a “bah humbug” feeling that I have about the holidays; I like giving and receiving cards and pretty decorations as much as the next person. It’s just during these difficult times when people are looking for work, or are working but can’t afford to keep up with their family, friends, and neighbors in their spending habits during the holiday season that makes me annoyed. At the same time, I know many of us have changed for the better after the lessons we have learned since the recession first hit in late 2008. Many people I know have limited their gift giving or changed what and the way they give to the people in their lives. I know it has more to do with being economical, but it also much more manageable to do it that way. I will be mailing out and hand delivering some holiday cards, sending online greetings to everyone else, and buying just a few, well thought out gifts for those closest to me. This is not because I feel like I must do so because all the commercials tell me I should; it is because I want to.

How do you combat the materialism of the holiday season?