Christmas Blues

Well Alvan, it's that time again...Alvan? Alvan....?!?!!??

Oh....I just had a panic attack that I had completely lost my mind and was talking to the chipmunks...you know...Alvan, Simon, Theodore....the..oh, forget it!

I am in fact loosing my mind and I'm sick and tired of Christmas shopping and I hate this boycott and it is killing the Christmas spirit; which obviously is to buy as much useless crap as you cannot afford to hurl at people you won't see again for months in a hopeless effort to get something from them which was cooler and more expensive than the crappy gift you bought.

Does that statement make me sound cynical?

I used to enjoy shopping. I liked Christmas shopping. I almost always started by July or August and was finished before the rest of the lunatics got to the mall.

This year I loath the whole miserable process because everything I can afford or am willing to pay for, is made in China.

That's not the whole reason though, I hate it because it is such a commercial experience.

I am not a very religious person but I do feel conflict and guilt over my desire, or even addiction, to time spent shopping for a gift for someone instead of investing that same amount of time actually interacting with the person I am buying a gift for.

I've spent a lot of time mulling over this issue and wondering why it is that I will subject myself to countless hours of unproductive time spent shopping, time where I am often in a rush, bitter and resentful towards my fellow shoppers who are always in MY WAY and hopelessly frustrated about what to buy. Rarely is gift shopping a pleasant, never mind tolerable experience for me. So why do I do it?

Why would I rather spend my time and money bolstering the economy of some major corporation, regardless of where they make their products, than I would spend that time hanging out with the people I care about? Has it become easier just to buy a mass produced gift instead of having lunch with my friend I've not seen in four months? And since I haven't seen that friend in four months, why do we all the sudden have time to get together when the exchange of gifts is involved?

I spent three or four hours Christmas shopping on Friday night. I canceled plans to go with Luke to a restaurant we've been wanting to go to, shoved some processed food product in my mouth, called it dinner and in an increasingly frustrated, cynical even rageful mood, tried to find "the damn gift" (I've lowered my standards enough to move beyond "the perfect gift").

All this resulted in was wasting a lot of time doing something I did not want to do, resenting that I was doing this, fighting with Luke and eventually buying "the damn gift" I saw when I first got to the mall hours ago.

What was the point?

I don't know that I have answers to any of the questions I've posed. I don't know that I have the strength, the where-with-all or the desire to look closely enough at my actions in order to better understand them. I do know though, that boycott or not, I do not feel very good about the gifts I've purchased so far and I don't think that is what gift giving was ever supposed to be about.

Yet how, even with a boycott that severely limits what you can buy, how do you get out of this consumerist vortex?