If I were to list down my shopping list for christmas, a migraine would begin to slowly creep into your skull, so you’ve gotten away this time. I used to think christmas is all about Santa fulfilling all my materialistic ‘needs’ and granting me temporary joy and happiness.
Ever since we were kids, it’s been instilled into our heads to want whatever our friends have, what society deems ‘popular’ at the time. Until I turned 14, I never realized that there’s officially a social construct dedicated to Christmas. Private firms are mischievous little things; well not so little but you get the idea. They have used the aim of christmas to their advantage and tweaked the rules just a bit. Christmas as you know is an event religiously celebrated by Christians; but here’s the fun part because a Christians primary belief during christmas is to share their riches with their neighbors or the community they live in, private firms snatched up that opportunity to make christmas one of the last days where they don’t have to have a clearance sale to get rid of inventory. No incentive needed, just the pressure of having to get a gift for a friend or a loved one is encouraging enough to assure your credit card gets a good workout.
Now what do I mean by riches ? So here’s one of the most common social constructs that adds a bright smile on all of the profit minded business’. Society has defined riches as money, materialistic pieces of paper that hold value and keep an economy afloat, rather than emotional riches. To be completely honest it’s in our human nature to choose money over something ‘wholesome’ but that doesn’t necessarily mean that we just give in to that little voice in our head. According to the true meaning of Christmas, the Riches you give is the love, compassion, and kindness you share with loved ones, friends and even strangers, that helps to unite everyone together. But, not everyone knows that compassion has a double benefit, the person that is compassionate feels generous to share their happiness with them, whilst the receiver experiences an increase in how happy they are.
But humanity has no objection at all since, they too want materialistic goodies that could save them the money of buying it themselves or because the reaction might seem wholesome. It’s quite disappointing to see people coming into their cousins, brothers or sisters’ houses expecting a gift, how morally right is that? Giving is one thing but expecting is another. One thing we can all agree upon is that despite the many costs 2020 brought in, living in isolation, even with our families helped us to mature emotionally. So here’s a suggestion, why don’t you give a homemade card or a small movie of memories rather than writing a list of the $200+ presents you expect on the 25th of December.
Tamira Fernando