How Foolishly We Waste Our Time and Money
The other day on the news, the television crews were filming the exploits of a few hearty souls who have already pitched their tents in a Best Buy parking lot; in anticipation of the huge savings they expect to reap on Black Friday. This is no small undertaking here in Ohio, since the days and nights are slipping into below freezing temperatures. If you are planning to spend a week in a parking lot, you need generators, and heaters. You also need someone to spell you a bit while you go to work, or the bathroom. Some of the people have even planned their vacations around this new form of waiting in line.
Seeing all this made me sad. Oh sure, I get the whole commerce aspect of the holidays. A great deal of money needs to change hands in order for companies to make money and therefore…keep people employed. I get the whole capitalism thing, but it makes me sad none-the-less.
I am 64 years old. That’s not ancient, and it certainly doesn’t give me sage status…but it does give me perspective. I have fifty-plus holiday seasons to reflect upon, and you know what is interesting? I can count on one hand all the Christmas presents I received as a boy that I can still remember. There was my Robby the Robot; which had a cable connected to it that you cranked to make it “walk”. I can remember my Davy Crockett metal fort with little plastic Indians and frontiersmen. I can remember a slot car set that I found under my parent’s bed prior to Christmas; which I played with every time my parents needed to leave the house to do more Christmas shopping. I remember the slot car set because I learned a valuable lesson-it’s more fun opening up a gift on Christmas morning that you haven’t already played with!!
I also remember a chemistry set my older brother bought me for Christmas. I remember it because I was shopping with him and his future wife when he purchased it. That chemistry set was important, not because it was a gift, but because it was associated with a wonderful evening I spent with the two of them. That night they made me feel special…I wasn’t a clunky little brother that they had to drag along with them that night while my parents were out doing something.
What pops into my head these days, when I think of Thanksgiving and Christmas, are the wonderful times I had with my family. My mom and dad, and my brother and I used to go to my Uncle Norm’s home for Christmas Eve, and my Aunt Mildred’s home on Christmas afternoon. Uncle Norm was my mom’s brother, and Aunt Mildred was my dad’s sister. My cousins were all there. In the case of my Aunt Mildred; my dad’s brother, Earl, and his family also came.
Neither home was very big, so everyone was crammed into every nook and cranny of the living room. Christmas decorations consisted of either a real tree…or one of those aluminum trees with a light that changed colors shinning on it. There were the Christmas cards scotch taped up for all to see. There where Christmas lights on the sills of frost-covered windows. By today’s standards, it wasn’t much.
But those rooms were filled with the people I loved, and the people who loved me. Except for my brother and me…and a handful of cousins, they are all gone now.
I’d like to tell the people in those tents at Best Buy to take their tent down and go home. I know they wouldn’t listen because they are young and they haven’t lost their parents and their grandparents, and their aunts and uncles. One day they will know, and they will be sad for having wasted time in a tent when they could have been with the people they loved.
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