Christmas Shopping Spending

                During the holidays consumer expenditure rockets through the roof as the average spending peaked in 2001 at $1,052; however the average spending has recovered and the predicted spending for 2013 is below the typical norm of $859 from the year 2007. Of course Christmas is the first holiday that comes to everyone's minds when it comes to big spending, and many may be quick to harshly judge this costly tradition. Truth is, people have the right to spend as much money as they please on their kids, family, even themselves, but is it time to stop making Christmas such a publicized event and go back to the simplicity of it all? When did Christmas start becoming a main focus on receiving physical favors rather than spiritual ones?

                People today are all about the obtaining the physical items that they think will make them happy. Sure if you have the money go for it, heck buy yourself something pretty, but in most cases people are putting themselves into debt trying to buy what everybody else has just so they can say they have it to. This usually leads to a series of unfortunate events such as; maxing out one’s credit card, getting oneself into debt, and realizing that Christmas is not the fun it used to be. It used to be all about baby Jesus coming into this world, December 25^th is not just a day about getting presents but it when our messiah, our savior came into this world and we tend to look past that.

                Commercializing Christmas has taken away the simple joy it brought and family values are becoming less important. Stores have a quota they need to make and our parents’ generation was a very profitable one where there was a lot of work, and the economy being so bad right now, prosperity is not as easy to come by as it used to be. Therefore people should not impoverish themselves to enrich others.  

Merry Christmas!