There is no denying that Christmas was the best day of the year when we were younger. But as we grow up and start to see Christmas for what it has really become, the glamour and excitement for the holiday admittedly fades. The gifts turn into bills and the lights lose their glow. Now we think of Christmas as a filled parking lots at the mall and endless papercuts from stuffing all of the Christmas card envelopes. The meaning of Christmas was lost the second that society started preferring presents to family.
As a little kid, all you can really think about is the jolly bearded man in the red suit that travels around the world delivering presents in one night via a reindeer-drawn sleigh. It was a series of raw anticipation: sending letter after letter to the North Pole, making sure you weren’t on the naughty list, perfecting the cookies and milk, and tracking Santa until he was on a direct route to your house.
The whole experience of being a little kid at Christmas is truly unlike any other. It is simply a magical time in your life, but it is an era that eventually comes to end. As you get older and that bearded man in the red suit fades away, the meaning of Christmas changes, and you realize what really matters to people.
I personally think that Christmas should act as a Thanksgiving part two. And what I mean by this is that the focus should be your family and spending quality time with the people you care about. Someone recently asked me what I wanted for Christmas this year, and I really could not come up with an answer for them. And this is not because I didn’t put any thought into what I wanted or needed, but rather because Christmas lists don’t have the excitement to them that they used to have.
Admittedly, opening gifts on Christmas is great, no one can deny that. But to me, that’s not what really Christmas is all about now. Christmas nowadays is driven by consumerism and the obsession about getting the best gift for the best price. This is all well and good, but the focus is too much on making someone happy through what you bought them and not enough on how spending time with them should be enough. How much money you can spend does not equate to happiness, but that’s just how society is now, and it is sad.
As a college kid who is away from home a majority of the year, I’m just happy to be home and around my family. I wish everyone looked at it as another holiday to celebrate with your family, but with so many people focusing on consumerism, it is hard to do that. That is why I miss being a little kid at Christmas the most. Not because of Santa or Rudolph or writing letters, but because as a little kid, you are oblivious to the fact that society has forgotten the meaning of Christmas.
