Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter Here

Simply saying “the holidays” can conjure up images of warmth and togetherness that are so necessary during these cold and lethargic months. Gatherings where the family awkwardly watches your uncle pour himself another double Old Crow into the mustard jar he’s been sipping from since 10 AM, all the time certain that the “turtleneck” he’s wearing under his off-white, cable-knit, reindeer sweater doesn’t extend past his shoulders. Images of the children, bathed in the yellow glow of the fire, as they sip hot chocolate and stare pensively at the smattering of wrapped gifts under the nearby tree, forcing you to fight the urge to smack them in their respective mouths for being so ungrateful for the food you put in their bellies, the roof over their heads, and the expensive methamphetamine-based narcotics you choke down their throats to dull their senses enough to make decent grades on their geography exams and make it into an ivy-league college, the cost of which will drain you of every last penny like some long-fanged vampire with a taste for retirement funds. The heart-warming memories of cutting into another of your wife’s bone-dry and flavorless turkeys, sawing back and forth at the breast like a hunk of granite, all the time dreading your auntie’s green bean casserole that every year tastes more and more like the cat urine in which her entire home is steeped, your vegan hippie sister’s curried cabbage casserole, which is at that precise moment filling the room with the unmistakable reek of backpacker’s crotch, and your mother-in-law’s fruitcake which, you’re quickly becoming certain, is made from some sort of fissile material that fell to the Earth sometime before life began to stir in the planet’s oceans.

Maybe your uncle doesn’t have such a bad idea after all.

The terrible food, the awkward family gatherings, the obligation to tell everyone that you know doesn’t give a crap “how you’re doing,” the cheap gifts, the uncomfortable silences after someone tells you you’ve had enough eggnog, the old people constantly talking about “waiting for the Lord to take them,” the malcontent teenagers that complain because grandma’s house doesn’t have HDTV and on top of all the personal struggles with which we all must contend during this most heinous of times, every manufacturer, retailer and street-peddler in the industrialized world is desperate to get everyone to spend money they don’t have, to buy shit they don’t need, to give to people they don’t like.

We can speak endlessly about the dangers of consumerism, especially during this time of greed and gluttony, but this ignores the basic tenet that every individual is responsible for their own actions, their own decisions and the consequences thereof. Take a quick look around eBay and you’ll see the new Sony video game console, the Playstation 3, on account of very limited supply, selling for $4,000 and up. Some have even sold in the $8,000 range. Sorry, the ones with auction end prices of $40,000 are just too high to believe, even this time of year when a human’s basic sense of self-preservation is casually thrown by the wayside as they claw a child’s eyes out to get at the last Elmo TMX doll.

In terms of hysteria, these things always have a way of combusting on a fuel of their own creation. Remember the mild hysteria when Microsoft released their next generation console, the Xbox 360? Pathetic losers camped out in front of department stores for days in advance, hoping springs eternal that they be given the opportunity to pay $500 for a few oddly shaped hunks of plastic so they can go straight home and sell it to some even more pathetic loser on eBay for $1000. Interest is peaked, more people see an even better opportunity now, least of all because of the growing holiday gift-chasing paranoia, so even more people can be seen camped out weeks ahead of time, which garners an obscene amount of media attention, both nationally and locally, because with the elections over there’s nothing else worth covering (except possibly the genocide in Rwanda, the Europe-shaking PM elections in France, record low gas prices, etc.) which fans even higher flames of interest, which makes the bidding for the pre-orders on eBay sky-rocket because the most pathetic of the pathetic losers (you guessed it: overpaid, absentee parents) are foaming at the mouth for this one material object they have deluded themselves into thinking will guarantee an intimate and deeply satisfying relationship with their alienated twelve-year-olds.

God, I need a drink.

Look, don’t get me wrong, stuff is cool, especially cool stuff, but there is a limit. Anyone willing to pay %1000+ over retail because your child MUST HAVE this doll or this game or this bike is doing no favors for anyone, let alone the kid. Sure, yours is the only kid on the block with a PS3 or that new at-home tattoo kit, but what has the young lad or lass learned about the most singularly important financial concept that can be taught to an individual that will soon enough be expected to freely participate in this most beautiful of concepts we call capitalism?

In case any of you misguided and self-absorbed parents are reading, the concept is called delayed gratification.

Wanting stuff is normal, don’t let the Commie anti-free marketeers convince you that you should feel guilty for wanting something that’s cool. The wanting is normal, the anger and the resentment and the aggression is not. Buddhists believe that all of life is suffering, and that all suffering stems from desire; that is to say, unfulfilled desires. The logic of the Buddhist is that suffering can only be assuaged two ways: get everything you want, or stop wanting stuff. Since getting everything you want is impossible, especially when you consider that most people don’t even know what they really want, the only achievable goal is to stop wanting altogether.

Of course, this is a lot easier when you live in a monastery in the mountains with no electricity and you’re brain is barely working correctly because all you eat is boiled carrots and no matter how many times you ask, they still give you that funny look when you ask if they have any coffee in the house. Clearly, the life of a committed Buddhist monk is not a realistic option for the typical citizen of industrialized Earth, but there are many lessons we can glean.

Getting everything you want is not a good thing. Aside from being pretty much impossible, it creates unhealthy expectations that can never be achieved, leading to disappointment, resentment and disillusion (read: Buddhist-style suffering). It also only serves to engender a grand disconnect from the other %99.9 of humanity that, not only doesn’t get everything they want, often don’t regularly get what they need. This disparity breeds animosity, discontent and envy. And let’s admit it, we’re a gregarious species, and despite what we tell ourselves, we really do care what other people think about us.

Just think about that douche-bag you went to high school with that drove the nicest car, got all the most expensive toys, and is now in prison for possession and distribution of child pornography. Sub-lesson: sky-high expectations also tend to warp one’s perceptions of behavioral boundaries. To illustrate that point, I recommend you all read The Dirt by Motley Crue.

Clark Howard, a nationally syndicated talk-show host and wildly successful author, speaks about people whose debt outpaces their earnings, a problem that is growing in magnitude in the United States, but also in Europe and Asia. His main point is that there’s plenty of money in the system, and average wealth is the highest it’s been since the economic boom after WWII, but in 2005, for the first time ever, for every $1.00 earned by the average American, they spent $1.01. Mr. Howard calls this a “wait problem.”

The problem is not that this person can’t afford that new car, or that new handbag, or that new computer, or that new PS3, (though, may times this is the case) they just don’t want to wait. That’s where the credit cards, the equity loans, refinances and debt, debt, debt come into play. After interest payments, that $6,000 PS3, paid off three years later (if you’re lucky) cost you $12,000.

Despite this Curmudgeon McScrooge routine, “the holidays” do have their limited charm. The annual box-load of underwear my mom gives me, despite the seventeen pairs she gave me last year have barely been worn, always reminds that she thinks about me all year long….while in the underwear department. The opportunity to buy the fetching Mrs. Sonnier another piece of dazzling jewelry, guaranteeing that tenuous affection she holds for me will last at least another six months (just until the anniversary) is also a bonus.

If you’re unfortunate enough to be watching television at any point during this time of the year, you’ll be bombarded by children’s specials and PSAs and the like explaining “the true meaning of the holidays” (on account of the PC Nazis having virtually obliterated the word “Christmas” from the routine vocabulary”) as a time of giving, and generosity, and family and all that horseshit. Just remember, there is a grain a truth somewhere in there, even if you have to get waist-deep to find it.