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HOLIDAY FINANCES
DOES GOING INTO DEBT PROVE YOUR LOVE?
I think the title for this piece is far too strong! And yet, and yet, I hear friends and colleagues and neighbors talk about incurring debt over holiday presents as if it were as natural as waking up in the morning. In reality, holiday giving seems to run along a continuum from the “gift” which seems to be so undesirable that it is passed, year to year from family member to family member—and perhaps that is an urban myth?—to the Magnolia Entertainment System that indeed nudges the giver into debt. In between are the sweaters, ties and fruitcakes that the recipients do not want. And, in the meantime, the givers are awash with lists of family, friends, neighbors, colleagues, dog shampooers et al—rushing through malls at the last moment, making hasty and ill-thought-out and even mistaken decisions, such as the Nintendo for Auntie Grace. The appropriate cliché is: “What is wrong with this picture?” Yet I think this phenomenon deserves more than a cliché. Whether Christmas means Santa Claus or Jesus the Christ to those who celebrate it, I think it appropriate to ask: At what point in time did the idea that Christmas meant giving, perhaps from the idea of the gifts of the Magi in the Christian Bible, or perhaps from Santa descending the chimney with a sack o’ gifts, did Christmas turn into a retailer’s basic profit for the whole year? That’s right. From the largest retailers’ to the most modest ye olde gifte shoppe, those weeks of holiday celebration purchases make all the red ink go away, and bring on the black ink profit. I think a huge disparity exists between the idea of a holiday that seems to focus on family and friends and loving and giving and receiving, and yet which actually seems to find itself more about debt, profit and loss, and the bottom line.
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