27 1999 |
Yesterday was the First Official Shopping Day of the Christmas Season. I had a cold, and spent the day on the couch, watching hours of MST3K on tape, and news coverage of the shopping ruckuses, broadcast live from various parts of the United States, commenting on the volume of stuff being bought and sold. I also napped, worked on a model of a Snowspeeder, and tinkered around on the internet.
But something struck me, making me say "well, s#1t!" out loud. ABC News (maybe it was NBC) said that the average Christmas shopper was going to spend over $800 on presents this year. $800!! That's over half of my GROSS paycheck, pre taxes, benefits, etc. They got that number from a survey of holiday shoppers. I think this goes back to the idea that the Media has a stranglehold on society's idea of what is real. All that their statistic tells me is that the people willing to spend the better part of a grand are the people out and about, bags and boxes stacked higher than they can carry, and are the people willing to stop and brag to a TV reporter about how much money they had to spend on presents.
This is probably going to be my most expensive Christmas in some time. I'm driving to go visit my parents (technically, it's "grandma & grandpa's house" now), plus I've budgeted a good chunk of money for presents this year. Total, I'm probably going to spend around $300-$400 total. That, however, includes travel, food, etc. Everything that I'm going to spend this Xmas will fit into that $300 or so. If I were to spend $800 on just presents, that adds up to close to $100 a person for all the people that I have to buy for.
Sorry, my idea of a gift is something completely different altogether. Both myself and my brother discussed this earlier -- if we eanted something bad enough, we'd just go out and buy it. He has lots of spare cash, I have little, but we both just buy the stuff that we want when we want it. Most people in today's society are like that. When you want something, you take hte money, you go to a store, and you buy it & bring it home. Christmas lists are hard to come by, because I have everything that I want. Even for my daughter -- when she wants something (within reason), I buy it for her.
How I buy presents is to buy something that I think the recipient would enjoy, but would never buy for themselves. It doesn't matter how much it costs; last year I spent $30 total for everyone's presents. I bought my mom a garden gnome, my sister got several packs of small rubber spiders, and I can't remember offhand what I got everyone else, but it was all interesting, memorable, and personalized. A couple years ago, I got my brother an eyepatch, some plastic dinosaurs, and some other odd little trinkets from the "Everything $1.00 Store" for Christmas, and he still has them, and remembers where he got them from. We are a wierd family, so these gifts really do fit into the "thought that counts" format. But I didn't have to spend $100 on anyone.
I shouldn't talk too loudly about this topic. I'm expecting $100 in cash from one set of grandparents (trip money), a goodly amount in gifts from my other grandparents, and quite a bit in gifts from my parents. Plus, with Destiny's gifts, and considering the number of relatives that I have, I don't doubt that my family is going to fit into that $800-spender bracket this holiday season. Unfortunately, I find that inconceivable, but you can bring up "season of giving" rhetoric and all that, and it does come down to wanting to buy something special for the ones you love. I'm hoping that the something special I get is a VGA-to-TV converter for my computer.