It seemed like an appropriate time of year to discuss materialism and how it is, or isn’t tied to your overall happiness. In the last few decades, it appears that everyone has slowly increased their consumption and developed some expectations about what Christmas means. The more presents you get, the happier you perceive you will be. The bigger the gift, the better. Because you have that little voice in the back of your head telling you, “Oh boy. I can’t wait to see what I get this year. I hope it’s going to be good”, you are doomed to be disappointed. It’s that expectation that is killing your happiness.
Imagine that you woke up one day and your friends and family all gave you small gifts to show their appreciation for you, and to let you know that you were important. If you had no idea that was coming, you’d be blown away with the acts of generosity. Part of that is because you didn’t know it was coming and the gesture felt like it was more sincere.
Contrast that with the current approach to Christmas. There are the reciprocal gifts. You know, the ones you run out and buy because someone bought you something that was unexpected. There are the gift competitions. In these cases it’s really an arms race to see who can buy the better gift. Careful. These situations can cause you to spend FAR more than you ever planned. Let us not forget about the obligatory gifts. Those are the gifts that you go out and buy because you HAVE to. Imagine the shock and horror if you showed up to Billy’s house without the obligatory gift. Why is it obligatory? Because you have to buy one so that you don’t feel akward. Too bad you don’t even really like Billy.
Awhile back the New York Times wrote an article about people in Denmark. They have a much lower expectation that good things will happen to them so when something good does happen, they are far happier that it did.
From the article:
“But on surveys, Danes continually report lower expectations for the year to come, compared with most other nations. And “year after year, they are pleasantly surprised to find that not everything is getting more rotten in the state of Denmark,” the paper concludes.”
This theory doesn’t assume you can’t be happy. I think that it assumes that the secret to happiness is to find the good in the smaller things in life. If you are always searching for the next big thing to happen to you, you could find yourself living an unhappy life.
My point is not any different than the many other posts you are probably reading about materialism during Christmas. The bottom line is that we have slowly lost sight of what Christmas really means. It’s not about standing in line at 4:00am to get a sweet deal. It\’s not about wearing the mouse out on Cybermonday. It’s not about charging up hundreds or thousands of dollars on your credit cards.
There is an interesting movie coming out from Morgan Spurlock. He’s the guy that made the movie, “Supersize Me”. The movie is called “What Would Jesus Buy?” and looks like it might be pretty entertaining. Heck, anything that keeps people from spending more than they should during a holiday that has turned in to a gift wrapped orgy, has got to be decent.