The season of excess is once more upon us. Thanksgiving and Christmas, occasions that evoked childhood delight, now loom as Scylla and Charybdis. Holiday expectations have reached epic proportions, with advertisers shaming us into expenditures of money and time beyond all reason.
Thanksgiving, once a nostalgic journey over the river and through the woods to Grandma’s house, now involves a road trip in a new luxury SUV proving that you’ve arrived, literally and metaphorically. If you’re hosting the feast, furniture stores offer “pre-black-Friday” interest-free financing on a new dining room set to impress your guests. New flooring will really set it off nicely, and your football buddies will love your new 70” OLED television and home theater seating, all installed in time for the Big Day.
Setting your new table will require more than great-grandma’s chipped holiday china. Luckily, every television show offers tips on converting your home into a display fit for a Martha Stewart magazine cover. With a few hundred dollars’ worth of craft supplies, a few hours scouring the forest for natural materials, a basement full of tools, and a few long nights of hard work, you can achieve the perfect look.
Outside, you’ll need to upgrade your Christmas decor. Sadly, your quaint strands of white lights won’t cut it this year. You need an array of inflatable snowmen, reindeer, and pre-climate-change North Pole replicas. Colorful projected lighting, coordinated with outdoor music, will show your neighbors that you’ve truly embraced the Christmas spirit.
After you’ve finished your Thanksgiving meal, it’s time for Black Friday shopping. As your wiser family members enter their tryptophan-induced hibernation, you’ll be braving icy roads, exhaustion, contagion, gun violence, and hand-to-hand combat. You could just relax on your couch with your iPad and shop on line, but you’d miss the adrenaline rush of this uniquely American rite of passage.
To really impress your Significant Other, you must arrange for that luxury SUV to appear in your enchanted-snow-globe-like driveway on Christmas morning. Stumped for ideas for gifts for your hard-to-please extended family? Take them all on a Caribbean cruise for the holidays! You’ll escape the inclement weather, make some beautiful memories, and learn whose immune system can best fend off norovirus.
Consuming too much, whether at the Thanksgiving table or the big box store, leaves us feeling bloated and disillusioned. I’ve reduced my “Christmas footprint” by shopping only at local small businesses or nonprofits. This year, seeing so many local merchants still reeling from Hurricane Florence, I don’t mind spending a little more, knowing that I’m helping some them stay afloat. I’ve increased monetary and material donations to the food bank, the thrift shop, and local charities on whom so many of my neighbors rely. I’m wishing for world peace globally, and a little peace of mind locally. That would be more than enough.
