Martin Lewis recently wrote an article in the Telegraph controversially suggesting banning Christmas presents, and I’m at least somewhat inclined to agree.
Is it time to ban Christmas presents? Across the country people are growling at the enforced obligation to waste money on tat they can’t afford, for people who won’t use it. Festive gift-giving has lost its point, risks doing more harm than good, mis-teaches our children about values and kills the joy of anticipation of what should be a joyous time.
Go read it – because for me at least – he makes some insightful points, and they aren’t about putting the “Christ back in Christmas” – Tim Minchin already covered that.
To some degree, it feel that once you reach a certain point in life, the best gifts you can get are actually sentimental things anyway – something that you made, or something that will remind someone of you actually has a much greater value than anything else. Bill Maher – an American Talk Show host explains:
The thing is, once you’ve got pretty good at knowing what you need, you tend to make sure you have it, because if you don’t, then you won’t have something that you need. It get’s quite difficult when people (feeling inevitably obligated!) ask you what you want, because, heck, you needed that thing now, not possibly sometime in the future.
Christmas isn’t about manipulatively pukeworthy, viral John Lewis adverts and as Tim Minchin sung, Christmas isn’t about selling “playstations and beer”. Finding the correct balance is something I don’t by any means profess to have done, but it is something I aspire to – and Martin’s suggestions on how to avoid the consumeristic black hole, are very much food for thought.
But there isn’t something one can decide on one’s own – Christmas is a time for everyone, and it means different things to different people – as much as it may not fit into Martin Lewis’s vision – giving gifts can be very enjoyable.
Anyway, I’ve put a lot of thought into coming up with this wishlist populated with a variety of things, ideas and an emphasis on the sentimental stuff that will mean the most to me.
