ResearchBeating the Christmas Consumer Blues
The barrage of commercials start on November first, and continue for nearly two months. You can't get into a store for a simple purchase without being plunged into a Christmas atmosphere. The same redundant twelve Holiday songs play on every muzak. Your daily newspaper has doubled in weight from the seasonal advertisements. Every commercial on every TV and radio station is pressuring you to shop until you drop. And considering that the human mind simply wasn't built to handle a steady two-month feed of Capitalist brain-washing, it's little wonder that the Christmas season can leave you feeling a little Scrooge-like by the Holiday proper.
The challenge is to hang onto your identity and your own definition of the Holidays throughout the campaign to turn you into a consumer cow. Here's my list of how I defy Christmas burnout:
Never do your gift shopping all at once. Break it up into little outings for each person on your list. Instead of doing it one-stop at a mall or mega-department store, go to specialty shops that cater just to the category of gifts you intend to buy. I always aim for the smallest possible business - the Mom and Pop stores will have unique items you never see in the big stores, they'll appreciate the business and will treat you like a person and not a number, and the assault on your senses is less overwhelming.
Break the Christmas card chain. I limit Christmas cards to a small select group of family. Really, the Christmas greeting card cycle of sending cards to people just because they sent cards to you last year can get silly. A Christmas card is nice, but how many have you received that honestly made your day? How many have you received, glanced at, and struggled to remember how you knew this person? Really, the kind of person who will hold a grudge against you for not sending them a card probably isn't the kind of person you wanted for a friend anyway.
Volunteer. Doing work at a local shelter or charity will really make your whole month brighter. Volunteer work has a special way of breaking that worry-about-me cycle we all sometimes get into. I have yet to meet the person working as a volunteer who is depressed. Picking up the responsibility of helping other people with their problems makes your own at least temporarily disappear, and can refresh your perspective on life.
Reward those who have to work through the Holiday season. The postman, the delivery driver, the sanitation worker, the security guard, civil service employees of all kinds - these are the people who make our society run, and they have to sacrifice Holiday vacation time to do so. Help them feel less invisible - they'll be surprised and pleased!
Take a "media-break". This is where you shut off the TV, radio, Internet, and other streaming news sources and rest for the day with just you and your recovering sanity. Read a book, watch a DVD, engage in a favorite hobby, or spend some time with the family playing board games or just plain talking. The deafening silence you hear will be your own brain thinking without Christmas carols and news breaks yelling in the background. I promise the outside world will still be there tomorrow.
A Christmas tradition in our household is the pre-Christmas clean sweep, where we go through the house rounding up stuff to throw out or give away to charity. Since we're all about to give and receive new stuff anyway, this helps escape the inevitable clutter by making space for it. Any non-essential item that you haven't touched in over a year is game for disposal.
Using these tips and any others in the same spirit you can think of, hopefully you can come through the Holiday season knowing that you at least left some personal stamp on your celebrations. After all, the Holidays are for you, so why not do them your way?