Holiday essay

As William Shakespeare once said “ If all the year were playing holidays, to sport would be as tedious as to work.

” I believe that many of us can have different views on what the holidays really are. To many they are just a time to receive gifts and to others they are a time to reunite with family I believe a lot of us have gotten confused as to what the holidays really are. Every advertisement in this years Thanksgiving edition of the Boston Globe was a command to hurry up and spend money for the holidays. It seems worse now than it has been in previous years. Out the television screen we rattle off expected holiday earnings. At the same time, tired, poor citizens rattle off expected holiday stress in protest of the unspoken law that says they must buy gifts or be failures.

They hope that the almighty Dollar might take its rightful place as the miracle most celebrated for the holidays. It is difficult to imagine that this happens every year to families quite possibly living in our community. The height of the American population toward the holidays is very scary. Come December, anxious men and women around the world begin to feel bad that they have not yet done their required “ holiday shopping.

” Dreading the day they go to the stores, they quickly select a number of items to give to every person they know. Dreading every dollar they spend, they try not to think of the fact that most of the things they couldn’t afford to buy – but bought anyway – will be put on a shelf and forgotten. Tired and short of funds, they hope that they will receive some satisfying reward Anyone who has ever attempted to buy something in the last two months of the year will understand what a miserable environment that it is. After becoming victorious in a struggle for a parking space, one will drag themselves to the entrance of the store like it is a walk of shame. Walking through the doors of a shopping center at this time of year is like walking through heck. Angry people storm from one store to another becoming alternately mad and frustrated as they are told that each shop is sold out of special something’s.

Certainly the holidays have not always been this way. While gift-giving has for centuries been an accepted component of Christmas, it was once a gesture of caring. When the presentation of a gift is done with no intention but to show caring, it is difficult to say whether it is the giver or the receiver that finds greater pleasure in the exchange. But when a gift is given because a gift must be given, it is almost as difficult to say whether either subject or object are moved by the gesture at all. Sadly, the tradition of the holidays has been reduced more and more by capitalism. The tradition has remained but its purpose has been culturally abandoned this has been the falling and failure of many valuable traditions.

Even with my expectations of people during the holiday season I am still shocked each year by the level to which the holidays have been reduced. In the media and on the streets. My head aches from the endless garbage of talking about gifts. The eyes of the people around me seem to say that they wish for the same thing. Have you finished your holiday shopping?