Unadulterated Greed

I hate Christmas. For starters, it is probably the most stressful time of year for me, for there is always the tension between the expectations of my parents and siblings "you've got to "do" Christmas, otherwise you are depriving your son of all things magical" and what I want to do (laze around a pool reading a book, relaxing and forget all about family expectations). Then there are my expectations (that this year will be different and family will all spend a bitch/whinge/snipe-free happy state of being) which are inevitably never met. But, worse of all there is the relentless, unadulterated, grasping, greedy commercialism that seems to start earlier and earlier every year. For fuck's sake, the tinsel and trees appeared in the shops just moments after the freaking Easter eggs had been taken off the shelves. AND, I hate the glossy, tree-destroying catalogues which appear in my letterbox months before, enticing people to spend, spend, SPEND and get themselves into debt, debt, DEBT. Because as we surely know, the degree to which we love someone is directly proportional to the amount of money we spend on their Christmas gift/s.

At work right now, I am surrounded by people who are rapidly working themselves into a frenzy with all the shopping, wrapping, posting, spending - putting everything on credit and buying things they cannot afford for people they don't really care for, because "that's what you do at Christmas". They will then spend the next month standing in queues returning gifts they don't want/don't like/don't need/don't work and a further 6months in a post Christmas funk, trying to pay off the credit card bill.

Tex and I recently went to Peru to visit our sponsor child. He and his family live in what most westerners would describe as abject poverty, but they are happy. Our sponsor child walks over 2 hours to school and back each day, then helps his father on the farm the rest of the time. We took him a soccer ball and pump and a T-shirt with an Australian flag on it and you would have thought we had given him a million dollars. He and his family have a rudimentary roof over their heads, basic food to eat and as much love and affection for each other as I have seen anywhere.

Most people would feel sorry for them - but as I look around my workplace and see unhappy, harried faces, I know who I feel more sorry for.