Christmas beckons in the horizon. The lights at Oxford Street are lit. Christmas carols are playing on the airwaves. The cold breeze suggests that red-robed Santa Claus is just around the corner.

In the US, fights break out in supermarkets with people scrambling to get their hands on the season’s must-have toys and gadgets purposely sold in limited numbers to drum up demand.

Here in the UK, the fighting’s about which singer would claim the Christmas No.1 song,
or women fighting tooth-and nails for the latest Kate Moss Christmas party dresses from Topshop.

There are those who save all year long to splash out on gifts for Christmas-time.

A friend of mine goes to Aldi’s and Liedl’s routinely at this time of the year to buy crates of soap, canned goods, and other items she sends back to her family in the Philippines in big Balikbayan boxes. Never mind that these items cost just a few pence a piece. Tears well in her eyes whenever she speaks of the ‘extreme happiness’ her nephews and cousins and aunts and uncles feel whenever they receive something ‘imported’.

It is said that Christmas is such a retailer’s success that if it did not exist, it would have to be invented.

However, consumerism has so characterized Christmas that it tends to undermine what it really is all about.

The Waldfogel effect
In 1993, an economist named Joel Waldfogel put forward a hypothesis on what he called the ‘deadweight of Christmas’. In essence, he suggested people valued the gifts they receive at Christmas time less than what the gifts actually cost.

Waldfogel calculated that $13 billion of the $50 billion Americans spend annually on Christmas gifts is wasted. I would think that’s not entirely off the mark. How many times have you received Planners you never actually used- or shirts that do not fit?

You can say that it is really that thought that matters. However, the pressure to buy presents is so much that we often spend more than we could afford.

Gone are the days when kids scream with delight at the receipt of a new Barbie doll or a Robot toy. Nowadays, kids expect an Xbox, a Sony Playstation, an iPod or a cellphone as presents.

This has the tendency to squeeze one’s credit limit and often result in debts that get carried over to the New Year.

That Easter comes after Christmas is more than coincidental for after the happy times spent over the holidays comes the bleak task of trying to recover from overdrafts and maxed-out credit limits.

Christmas in our hearts

Economists find it difficult to explain gift-giving. For them, it is odd that money flows in ‘reverse’. Money has to come in, not out they argued.

Yet, it is such the magic of the occasion that people who barely know each other would exchange greeting cards and cheers and even children who squabble regularly find themselves giving each other gifts. A lot of people use this occasion to reconcile with their ‘enemies’ kasi pasko naman,

Whenever, we hand out a gift, it is a reaffirmation of a relationship. Needless to say, the value of our gifts is commensurate to the value of the person we are giving the gift to. I could give my local postman a £5 and a bag of chocolates. That won’t work for my sister who demands, to my detriment, no less than a designer handbag for a Christmas present.

For us Filipinos, Christmas is such a big part of our culture. Any travel agency will tell you that more Filipinos come home in December than in any other part of the year.

I spent last year’s Christmas at a charming little village in Abra. There was a big family reunion and all the members of my friend’s clan gathered in their ancestral home. Farmer neighbours from as far as 5 kilometers away came too, to try to solicit gifts from the more affluent guests. My heart broke into a million pieces when after giving a P50 peso bill (.50p) to a 60-something old lady she thank me teary-eyed, ‘Tuwing pasko lang ako nagkaka-regalo.”

Spread the Love
Christmas is truly a delightful time not only for the festive spirit it brings but for the values it symbolises.

Try not to give more than you could afford, but more importantly, give with what truly is in your heart.

Remember that the highlight of the season is not when the three Kings gave gifts to Christ–but His birth into this world.

Merry Christmas everyone!