The season 'tis upon us again. The season of rampant consumerism, family feuding and driving (or flying) hundreds of miles to see relatives that you don't really remember and probably could do without seeing.

Here it is no more than a few days after Thanksgiving (at the time of this writing) and the Starbucks from which I am writing this has broken out the Christmas decorations. "A Sleigh Ride" is playing over the speakers while outside, a chilly drizzle is falling from the sky. Stores are advertising their specials. Children are pulling their tired, weary parents from window display to window display, showing the kind of hedonistic greed that only children are capable of while still managing to make themselves look cute doing it. Coca-Cola is running an ad in the theatres showing a young child growing up, meeting Santa at the same place every year to receive a Coke. The message of this commercial seems to be "It's okay to accept drinks from strangers, as long as they're fat and dressed in red.". And through it all, the Anti-Christmas Nazis are there to make darn sure that it's "Winter Holiday" that we're celebrating, not some religious holiday.

My God, how did we get here?

When did Christmas become about getting? Exactly when did we start equating Christmas with the tradition of giving and receiving gifts? Of course that's always been a part of it, but the commercialism that I see now is something that I don't remember from my childhood. I probably just wasn't paying close enough attention. I remember thoroughly reading through the JC Penny's Christmas catalog and circling the things I wanted. Eventually I would start creating extremely elaborate ways of displaying my lists to my parents. I once constructed a contraption out of cardboard that had a light and a tape player in it. It was constructed in such a way that when switched on, the white screen on the front would be backlit and display the list, and a recording of my voice explaining each of my choices would play. In my greed, I even went so far as to include the price and the store where all my toys could be purchased from.

It's something we've encouraged, sadly. As soon as Thanksgiving ends we start asking each other "What do you want for Christmas?" American consumers who are eager to avoid the rush that accompanies last-minute shopping start hitting the stores hard. Children are encouraged to write letters to Santa about what they want. They can even go to the store and talk to Santa, face to face! And they can tell him about what they want and even have their picture taken with him for only $8.25. And during all of this people don't think about the fact that most of the stuff we get (minus the few practical items) goes into the closet and we never see it again. Kids forget about their new toys in a few days. The new coffee grinder breaks, we wear our new outfit a few times and then decide that we have to wait a while before wearing it again. We stuff the new robotic vacuum cleaner into the closet downstairs where we store such things. Do you have one of these in your house? A closet where you put things that you never use? At our old house in Grimes, it was in the downstairs bathroom. There was all manner of weird pots and some oddly-shaped bowls and some weird device for cleaning teeth that I never saw used. There was the salsa chopper that mom had to have that she used once, tops, and the big box of old record albums and random papers.

The very existence of such a closet should clue us into the fact that we don't need or want half of the stuff that we have. There's a great and poignant satirical piece (Potentially offensive language) in The Onion in which a Chinese worker opines about "all the stupid crap that he makes for Americans". "I hear that Americans can buy anything they want, and I believe it, judging from the things I've made for them". And it's a good point.

When the holiday becomes more about the exchange of worthless junk than on the interactions of family something is terribly wrong. And it's our own dang fault. Do you complain about the commercialization of Christmas? Then freaking do something about it. Stop encouraging the commercialization with your ridiculous buying. Stop giving your kids the impression that they should expect a bountiful harvest of injection-molded plastic on this day. (They'll have more fun playing with the cardboard boxes their toys come in, anyways.) Refuse to participate in Black Friday. Focus more on the interactions you have with your friends and family than on the superficial gift-giving. Scale back on your giving this year. Make personalized gifts for the people who really matter in your life. A scrapbook for your parents or a set of painted wooden figures for your kids. Or buy something and personalize it some other creative way. Let your holiday season reflect on the joy of being around people you love. Play games together. Talk. Share an enjoyable meal. Make snow angles with your kids.

Decide what Christmas is really about to you, and refuse to participate in something shallow and trite.

Exit, stage left. Sparks