By Adam Kaplan
It’s that wonderful time of year when our email inboxes are filled every single morning with, “The greatest deals of the year for 24 hours only!” (Of course, that same online vendor will send us almost the exact same email about “The greatest deals of the year for 24 hours only!” every day for the next month!) It is that splendid time of year when a simple trip to Target will require that the wise person bring a backpack, hiking boots, and a camp stove since they are likely to have an arduous hike to the store from the enormous distance they were forced to park their car! It is that magical time of year when Jingle Bell Rock becomes so repetitive that those first few electric guitar strums at the beginning of it sends me into a Pavlovian rage that sends those in my vicinity running for cover. It is that meaningful time of year when every other Fox News segment addresses the pervasive and incredibly damaging “War on Christmas” that endangers the very fabric of civil society. (Oops…sorry about that. I promised myself that I would never go political in the Arrowhead!)
On top of those annoyances, many are turned off by the whole gift giving part of the holiday season because it is so indicative of how pervasive the commercialization of our culture has become. Without exaggeration, many businesses are entirely dependent on all of us buying into the whole holiday shopping season concept. Businesses either thrive or are destroyed based solely on how successful they are at getting us to buy gifts during this time of year. Whether you are a religious person or not, I suspect that there are very few of us that are not on some level really turned off by the garish homage to commercialism and consumption that the holiday season represents
Many also despair at the arrival of the holiday shopping season because they are presented with the daunting (and often incredibly expensive) task of procuring gifts for long lists of friends and family. There are parents, grandparents, siblings, friends, and children that have to be addressed. Without a doubt, this can be an extraordinarily stressful task, and one that, for many, is so intimidating that they dread the holiday season for this reason alone.
While paragraphs two and three of this article suggest, I am not without a certain degree of cynicism when it comes to this time of year and many of its gift giving trappings, I have to say that I am a real believer in the aspect that requires each of us to think about a gift for each of the important people in our lives. I think it is a really healthy exercise for each of us to take some time out to think about each person in our lives that is special to us. To really think about them…to think about what they like. To think about what they love. To think about what they need. To think about what makes them special. To think about what things they are interested in. Our lives are so busy these days that we rarely take the time to think about those that are so special in our worlds. If we do it right, the holiday season forces us to take time and do so.
Now to be clear, I am not being paid by the folks at Macy’s to use my profound influence on my voluminous readership to boost sales. In fact, I am one of those that believes that a personally made piece of art, or a thoughtful note make the best gifts. In truth, these handmade and personal gifts speak even more strongly to my point about spending time thinking about people personally.
But regardless of whether you purchase a gift or hand make something for those on your list this year, let’s all reshape our thinking about the task of tackling our holiday lists this year. Give each of those folks the most precious gift you can give them…your time and your thoughts.
Have a great holiday!
(The preceding article was brought to you by the United States Chamber of Commerce and its affiliates.)
