If there is one thing all adults agree on, it is this – the holidays suck. Compared to prior decades, the holidays are now more mercenary, less enjoyable, and start earlier and earlier, snuffing out the magic of the season. I am here to tell you: the holidays do not have to suck, but if they don’t, you aren’t doing them right. My grandfather emigrated from Ireland. He used to like to tell the old joke: “I came to America because I heard the streets were paved with gold. I got here to find out that the streets were not paved at all and I was expected to pave them.” We remember those magical holidays of our youth and wonder where they went. Well, the truth is the holidays aren’t magic now – they weren’t magic then either.
The holidays were always hard work. Now, it’s your job to do the hard work to make them magical for downstream generations. Truth be told, holidays sucked for your parents and grandparents – now it is time to take up the task for your cohort. Worse still, all the work you put in will never measure up to the false, hazy memories of your childhood. We are spending a lot of time and a lot of effort and a lot of money to recreate memories that were probably not that good to begin with. You remember that great big pile of Hershey’s kisses you demolished at grandma’s house, but you forgot how sick you felt afterward. You recall the awesome thrill of the RC car you got, but forgot how it was broken before school resumed. The holiday season is one giant, doomed-to-fail effort of chasing the pecan-pie high you only think you had decades ago. It is of vital economic importance to the nation, and to the world, that gift-giving and presents suck.
If every person bought only what they needed, and paid a price that seemed fair to them, the economy would operate much more efficiently. Your aunt buying you a sweater that you had no interest in wearing, or a CD for a band that you no longer listen to on a device you no longer own, introduces a great deal of waste into the economy. However, another name for that waste is jobs. Jobs for longshoremen unloading boxes at the dock, jobs for salesclerks, jobs for people who work in wrapping-paper factories, jobs for people who design CD covers for bands that disbanded three decades ago, and jobs for people at the Chia Pet company. Without the jobs created to feed the Great Maw of the Holiday season, the economy would grind to a halt; now that would really suck. For the economy, for our families, for the future and for the past: embrace the suck. •
Illustration by John Gendron
