Holiday Afterglow

About the only time of year I don't mind the mess in my living room is the week between Christmas and New Years. I like to let the kids and I bask in the holiday afterglow. The tree is still up and shedding needles (damn balasm) and doing well. The gifts are out for people to look at and tinker with. There are still some cookies, there's definitely good coffee (I got a couple cans of illy from my son). There's Premier League soccer on boxing day and over the weekend. The college football and bowl games are just getting underway. There's a nice reprieve from work and school.

It seems that a lot of people like to set up the tree and decorate right after Thanksgiving and take everything down as soon as it's done. To me that seems to make the holiday more about the shopping season and as soon as everything is opened and handed out, it's time to move on without even taking time to enjoy what was just given.

In a way it's a statement as to how materialistic and how dull we've become. It makes the holiday into nothing more than another rat race. Stress and rush and go into debt only to have the holiday itself be gone in a flash and then move onto the next thing. The stores already have swimwear and winter escape and spring cleaning supplies out. They just want you out buying the next thing. Don't stop spending. Christmas stretched finances, now stretch them again with a getaway. Then with Easter. Then with the implements of summer fun. We've become robots working on the conveyor belt of time.

The pace has become so hurried that Christmas clearances have started before the Holiday. In getting my (live) tree a little later I was able to get a good deal as they were already being cleared out more than a week before Christmas. Stores were already offloading decorations at 30% off around that time too.

Black Friday has stopped being black Friday. It has essentially bastardized Thanksgiving into a stuff yourself with food then go shopping holiday. It will keep getting moved up until people decide this mode of doing things is stupid and (most importantly) stop doing the stupid thing. Ultimately, the only incentive for change is money or lack of money being made when people decide to stop spending. Now this isn't of the significance of lunch counter sit ins, but it is about potentially preserving the pace of life.

Thus, I say slow down people! Take time and enjoy the aftermath of holidays and events. Life isn't supposed to be a race to the next thing as eventually the next thing will be not life. You miss out on the journey and it makes life shorter if all you do is frantically hurry to the next thing only to drop it for the next thing as soon as it's passed.