See the opposing argument here.
Old Christmas is dead, but hold your tears and don’t mourn quite yet.
The New Christmas is worthy of all your joy and praises, but more importantly, your money. The Old Christmas feelings of cherishing what you have and rejoicing in what you can give others is gone. Now we get to look forward to the new most wonderful time of the year. We ought to sing an ode to the wonders of pure unfettered capitalist consumption, because, let’s face it, the Pope was wrong. Isn’t it ironic that it took consumption to expand the twelve days of Christmas? Once companies realized that people would willingly skip their Thanksgiving meals and “all important” time with the family to stand in line for hours– in some cases, the whole day– just to get that all important fifty inch plasma television, our chances at keeping Old Christmas alive were gone.
New Christmas, thankfully, is much better than Old Christmas. Old Christmas was boring; we had to spend time with those boring family members that we only have to see once a year. With New Christmas, we can hide out with the latest video game console (which are meant to “console” you), and ignore all those family members we really did not want to see anyway. Or you can spend your time at the mall! I hear the latest clothing stores have some really sick discounts around Christmas time; doesn’t that sound better than spending time with boring old gram-gram– have you seen the sweater she wears? Let’s throw out Old Christmas as fast as we can ditch grandma in favor of the BOGO sale down on the shoe store. Rather than just have Thanksgiving be a national shopping holiday, we should move it to Christmas too! People can take the whole day off of work just to rush early to the nearest electronic superstore to stock up on tons of other distractions. All of these will help you to continue ignore those family members whose presence is really just a burden.
A quick word of caution regarding family members: make sure you spend enough time with them to still glean some decent gifts out of them. Spending that extra twenty minutes with your great aunt could snag you a decently sized gift card. Do not pass up those opportunities! New Christmas is all about maximizing gift potential across all areas, so if there is a quick reward for nodding off through another war story—go for it! Old Christmas was about forcing you to spend time with family members, and no one wants to do that. New Christmas is about choosing to spend time with family members, but only if there are gifts involved!
Christmas is no longer about family presence. It’s now about family presents. Be thankful for all you have this Christmas: the gifts—not that other stuff.
[…] See the opposing argument here. […]