Post-Christmas observations

All of our celebrations, including Christmas, begin way too early anymore. When I was a kid, there was a two-week window, now it’s a month and sometimes longer. In fact, when one holiday is over, we begin to celebrate the next one. This is fueled primarily by business interests who have products to sell and they want to sell as many as possible. Everything seems to be about the dollar anymore and they don’t intend to be denied any. Like most things in the world, this has an upside by taking the pressure off consumers to purchase things in a hurry which often leads to purchases we shouldn’t have made. The more time we have, the more relaxed our buying habits tend to be and, consequently, the fewer mistakes we make. But consumers tend to see this as an all assault on their finances by big business and therefore take exception to it. I hear the argument that “all they want is my money” often and I’m sure you do too.

The pressure to buy is intense and ongoing and businesses know this. The most vulnerable are the elderly who have always been suckers for a smooth tongue and they still are. I always thought the toughest thing in the world to sell would be something you know people don’t need or even want but there’s never a shortage of people available to sell just those things. Lou Holtz, the legendary college football coach, was the keynote speaker at an insurance convention a few years ago and he began his remarks by saying that during the meal that precluded his speech, he was walking around the room listening to conversations the insurance salesman were having and the dominant conversation was making their sales quota. He stated that was much worry and concern about nothing; that all the salesman had to do was figure out how many no’s they had to listen to before they got enough yes’s to meet their quota. In other words, the rejections didn’t matter, only the sales did. Consequently, there are millions of people trying to sell us a pig in a poke, whether we want one or not.

The most distressing thing to me about holidays in general and the Christmas holiday, in particular, is the relatively short time we’re nice to each other. It begins sporadically the day after Thanksgiving when we start focusing on Christmas and steadily increases until it’s literally a countrywide love fest the last week or so before Christmas and then abruptly ends the day after Christmas. And the lovefest seems genuine. People are kinder, gentler, and more empathetic during those two weeks leading up to Christmas than they are at any other time of the year. You can tell it in their voice and see it in their eyes. And then, amazingly, it for all intents and purposes ends the day after Christmas and people go back to being who they were before the Christmas holiday started. I know it’s possible to maintain that spirit of Christmas indefinitely if we were just motivated to do so but it seems we’re not.

So I always enjoy the Christmas holiday more than any other and hate it when it’s over because that brief glimpse of joy and happiness I see every year doesn’t last.

And it could.