Advice from a Small Town Girl

I've been thinking about Christmas lately.

That's right. Not even Thanksgiving yet, and I'm thinking about Christmas. This is so unlike me.

All I can do is claim that this uncharacteristic behavior is down to undue influence by the television.

I'm pretty sure some of the Christmas advertising began before Halloween, but it wasn't quite as obnoxious then as it is fast becoming.

I apologize for that sentence. Blame it on the media.

So, anyway.

I was sitting in my living room the other day, and the TV was on, as is usual when both of us are home.

Christmas ad after Christmas ad after Christmas ad surrounded me, and suddenly I thought, "That's enough! I'm boycotting Christmas!"

Now, virtually everyone I know has, at one time or another, complained about the commerciality of what is, in politically correct parlance, known as "The Holiday Season."

Not so many of us have actually done anything about it. Or if we have, the huge push to shop shop shop and buy buy buy is so irresistible that those who keep Christmas close to their hearts are lost in the uproar.

I like to think back with a great deal of nostalgia to the Christmases of my childhood, when a board game was a great gift and we were thrilled if a small toy was in our stocking along with the orange and the nuts and candy. From this advanced age I can see that the spiral of consumerism was already well advanced. I can remember being jealous of my friend who received a Chatty Cathy doll. Never mind that I didn't play with dolls.

How did this all happen?

I'm sure that there is a plethora of historians who can lay out the transition of Christmas into the commercial festival that it has become.

But that isn't what concerns me.

What concerns me is our transition as individuals.

"Black Friday" is upon us, and I've been listening to those who plan to go directly from the Thanksgiving table to get in line for the latest gadgets that their family members just must find under the tree this December.

Frankly, I find this baffling.

For one thing, I can barely move after Thanksgiving dinner.

For another, I'm extremely uncomfortable in crowds.

And finally, I just don't understand why we need all this stuff.

Mind you, I have a pretty impressive collection of stuff, myself.

Because I'm just as susceptible to the Madison Avenue brainwashing techniques as anyone else.

And now that I am a business owner, I hope to use just a few of them myself. Because in spite of everything I've said here, you'll find somewhere in these pages a Christmas ad for Experience Quilts!