Tis the Season...

My wife, Marilyn, enjoys nothing more than to go through the sales circulars in the Sunday paper. She will find the select items without which she cannot live and will add them to her list of things to buy sometime during the next few days. About the only sales circulars I find interesting are the Fry's ads or CompUSA... mostly electronic stuff. But in general I find the whole business of going out shopping to be an experience that usually just wears me out. I get little pleasure or satisfaction in the pursuit of the next great sale.

The Friday after Thanksgiving has come and gone and the initial craziness of people lining up all night to get the spectacular savings on tvs and cameras and clothes and whatever else one can buy... that was over. I felt very proud of myself that I did not allow Marilyn or me to get sucked into that temporary madness.

However, today the shopping bug bit me and it was me who was poring intently over the Sunday ads. Hey, I am only human. I saw this ad for a really nice 20" flat screen television set for under $100. And there were a few other goodies that caught my eye. All told, we were not going to be spending a huge sum of money. But today I was ready and willing to do my part to support our economy. I was ready to do my patriotic duty.

We grabbed a quick bite at Subway. After we finished our lunch, we made a bee-line for Circuit City in the Galleria area. In no time at all, we purchased the television set. But before we went to pick up our purchase at the loading dock, we made one circuit around the store.

Both of us like electronic stuff... really nice electronic stuff. Stereo units, cds, dvds, digital cameras, etc. Most of the things we already own are really pretty adequate to serve our needs. But the new stuff... the cameras and the new lcd tv sets, they sing their siren song and we are pulled in their direction.

We were standing in front of an lcd tv with a much bigger screen and a significantly bigger price tag than the set we just bought. I said to Marilyn, "Next year this time, we will come back and get one of those." Here we were. We had just bought a new television set, and I was already making plans to replace it. After our new set had been loaded into the front seat of our car, I was thinking about what I had said to Marilyn. I thought to myself, "Something is very wrong with this picture."

Please do not get me wrong. Like most Americans, I like to have really nice clothes and a great place to live and nice furniture and... well, you get the picture. Usually, I am able to rein in my urge to actually go out and buy that something better thing. This nagging urge is always just a short distance under the skin, just waiting to break out. Who doesn't like the good feelings we get when we buy something new, even if we don't really need it or if we can't really afford to spend the money. Nevertheless, for a short time, all is well with the world, at least until the bill comes in.

We moved on to another store. I had to pick up a spare battery for my digital camera. In typically male fashion, I found what I wanted and a cd that caught my eye.

I was about ready to head over to the cashiers when a strange thought entered my mind. I looked around at the overabundance of things I could buy. MP3 players and portable dvd players with 5" screens and stereo sound. Really powerful computers. Laptops. Ten megapixel cameras no bigger than a credit card. Any one of 10,000 different titles of cds or dvds. This overabundance of things I could have, if I only wanted them enough, for a moment overwhelmed me.

At that moment, I realized that in thousands of stores just like this one there were even more lovely items for sale. And in reality, most of us really don't need to have them. But we want them anyway. The merchants of the world have made it their holy mission to get us to buy them, enticing us with rebates and by slashing prices until our resistence melts away. And especially from Thanksgiving to Christmas Day and even after that. My good sense gave way to an urge almost as strong as that of sex. Today, I needed a new television set like I need another hole in my head. But now I own a new one.

Why does this bother me so much at this moment? I am trying to figure that out. I only know that sometimes there are more important things that I should be doing with my time and with my money. Maybe it is because this overabundance of stuff blinds us from seeing that there are too many people, young and old, who are standing on the fringes of our society. They lack the means to buy much less enjoy these goodies that our country has available. Important areas of our society go begging for money, like our schools... like mental health programs... like the lack of health insurance for poor kids who are excluded from enrollment in any subsidized insurance plan. Even in this rich nation, children go hungry every day. Mankind is always at war, somewhere in the world. In short, there is genuine suffering in the world today.

Our eyes become glazed over by the dancing visions of all these goodies in the stores in this most joyous and expensive of seasons. At a time when we should be opening our hearts and getting involved to confront the problems we are seeing, where are we? Rushing mindlessly from one store to the next, to grab up as many specials as we can from cameras to automobiles to diamonds and pearls. Nice.

I am bothered most about how we can so easily become hypocrites during the shopping season.
I am not Christian. But I can at least agree with the notion that the time of Christmas is supposed to get us to work for Peace on Earth, Good Will toward other people. A nice thought. I am Jewish. We have Hannukah. The celebration of lights, during which we focus on the quality of hope and of commitment to a cause, even when the odds of winning are slim. Our holiday is about keeping the faith, even when all seems lost. These are equally worthy sentiments.

However somewhere between Santa's appearance at the end of the Thanksgiving Parades and Christmas, these messages get lost. There is such a din of elevator music Christmas carols in the stores and the sales ads, that all that most of us can think about is, "Gimmee this and gimmee that."

So standing amidst all these wonderful things, I found the place just a bit of an embarassment. From the merchants to the customers in the stores to the political powers that be... the season that promotes peace and tolerance and kindness and hope has become something else in this great nation. A lot has been lost. So many things that made the holidays so rich in meaning and significance has been lost.

Even now, in Jewish families, as each family will very soon celebrate the eight days of Hannukah, the main thing for most Jewish kids is what gift they are going to receive on each night of the holiday. And that tradition of giving eight gifts to kids over the course of the holiday developed because their parents did not want them to feel left out when Christian children celebrated Christmas, and got all those presents. Maybe this gift-a-night thing really wasn't all that great an idea after all. So much which is truly good and meaningful is being forgotten, in the process.

Maybe I am making something of a big deal about all this. I am certainly not against the gift-giving that has become part and parcel of this pleasant time of the year. I only wish that during this period, each of us would set aside even a small amount of time to reflect on what these holidays are really about. We should want something more out of what we are experiencing, than just to get caught up in an annual orgy of shopping opportunities. There should be more to these holidays than that.

So I have said my piece. I have my thoughtful moments but I will not pretend that I am any better than anyone else, when it comes to the holidays. So now Marilyn and I are off to another store to snap up a few more great buys. But, because of my nature, I will be stopping a few more times along the way, as a reality check, in an effort to keep all this in perspective.

Kindest regards

Howard Fireman