Are you facing piles of catalogs, radio commercials, and emails/texts offering “Black Friday Discounts” at every turn? Do you have mailbox anxiety every time you open the lid and see stacks of ads? AAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!! There is a wonderful podcast by Tim Harford, called “Cautionary Tales.” In his December 2022 episode called, “The Company That Cancelled Christmas“, he highlighted that our Christmas culture is not only relentless, it is also based on assumptions and unhelpful traditions. For example, how many times do we receive gifts we do not want- that basket of soaps that smells like a JC Penny perfume counter, or the singing fish gag gift we took home after the office elephant gift exchange. Rather than rethinking what we are doing, we just do the whole thing again the next year. Research suggests that if we quantify the amount of enjoyment produced for every $20 spent, we are consistently losing $2-4 dollars! Even worse, our wallets suffer to keep up. According to the book, Scroogenomics, economic waste equates to eighty-five billion dollars each winter!
If you’d like to a chance to consider the assumptions and traditions we have around this time of year, I urge you to listen to the podcast (you can get away with listening to just the last ten minutes and get some really great perspective) or read the book mentioned above. They provide insight and ideas for how to enjoy gift giving without losing our minds or our wallets. Hopefully, each of us can rethink our approach so together we can reclaim the true meaning of the holidays.