Christmas, Consumed
Something that happens every December: the department stores get crowded around 3 PM, people looking panicked, kids crying, someone’s mother-in-law trying on the same sweater in three colors. I used to go to one of these places on December 23rd, thinking I could pick up whatever was left, and it was always chaos—people shouting at their kids, the checkout lines snaking through the toy section, everyone moving like they’re the only one in the store. You’d think by now we’d know better.
Christmas is supposed to be a moment to step back from all of it. A week where you’re not supposed to be going anywhere, where time is supposed to slow down, where you can actually sit with the people who matter and not be thinking about your email. That’s the idea anyway. In practice it’s the opposite: more running around, more buying, more decorating, more cooking, more wrapping, more noise. The whole machine just accelerates.
I think somewhere along the way we decided that the size of the gift pile proves that you care. That a Christmas dinner has to be elaborate and stressful to mean something. That if your house isn’t covered in lights and tinsel, you’re doing it wrong. None of that is true, but we act like it is.
There’s something about the season that makes people lose their minds. You end up in these moments where your mother is stressed about chopping vegetables, your sister is stressed about finding the right present, your grandmother has already told the same story three times, and everyone’s wound so tight that nobody’s actually present for any of it. You’re all in the same room, but you’re all mentally somewhere else—at the next store, at the next task, at the next thing that has to be perfect.
What if you just didn’t. What if you sat down with your sister instead of running to the mall. What if you told your mother she doesn’t need to cook like it’s a restaurant opening. What if you actually looked at your grandmother when she’s talking, instead of planning your escape. It sounds simple because it is. But somewhere we decided that presence wasn’t enough, that we had to prove our love through consumption and exhaustion.
I’m not saying don’t give gifts or don’t cook or don’t decorate. I’m saying the point of all of it should be the time together, not the thing. And if the thing is getting in the way of the time, then you’ve already lost. That’s the part I always come back to.