A Healthy, Happy Christmas

Christmas is nigh, and the push for gift-giving and shopping is high. Before you hit the mall in a frenzy, consider sharing your wealth with people in Pakistan or New Orleans if you haven’t already done so. It might help prevent your catching “Affluenza: n. a painful, contagious, socially transmitted condition of overload, debt, anxiety, and waste resulting from the dogged pursuit of more.”

The quote is from the book Affluenza: the All-consuming Epidemic, which chronicles America’s love affair with greed.

Non-stop commercials will flow forth from the boob-tube from now until Christmas Eve, encouraging American consumerism. They will try to convince us of the necessity of unnecessary possessions to attain happiness.

Since the 1950s, television has been encouraging us to keep up with the Joneses. It has influenced our values, our attitudes, our self-esteem, and our collective psyche. In 1957, Americans’ happiness was at its apex. We felt rich as individuals, and even though our actual Gross National Product has doubled since then, our happiness ratio is now in decline.

A prime example is housing. In 1950, the average house was 950 square feet—what is now becoming the size of our garages (p.24-25).

Americans work the longest hours (55 per week) of any industrial nation. Our household debt is now 125% of our disposable income, with over $9,000.00 credit card debt per household, and a savings rate of a meager 0.2% (p. 20-21). More people file for bankruptcy than graduate from college.

We bemoan the dissolution of family values, yet refuse to see the connection between consumerism and the waning of family time. According to the chapter that deals with family issues, we spend about 40% less time with our children than did the past generation, and only about twelve minutes a day talking to our spouse. In The Stress of Excess the authors (DeGraff, Wann and Naylor) state that we spend nearly seven times as much time shopping than we do playing with our children. Regular family meals and vacations have dropped about a third.

Although people may live in the same household, they often spend all of their time in different rooms, glued to a screen of one form or another.

Our free-market system creates demand for more items, which pits children against their parents and destroys family harmony.

“In 1984, kids four to twelve spent about $4 billion of their own money. This year they’ll spend $35 billion. Marketing to children has become the hottest trend in the advertising world…From 1984 to 2004 the amount spent on children’s advertising in America rose from $100 million to $15 billion a year, a staggering 15,000 percent!” (p.55)

The desire for more “stuff” pushes cheap commodities that do not last very long, at prices that do not allow us to pay workers reasonable salaries to produce. The outcome is a loss of jobs and family cohesiveness for the acquisition of junk.

The family is not the only American unit to suffer. The chapter on “Community Chills” explains in great detail how the “chaining of America” has led to the demise of small-town businesses. This begins a reaction that can cause various social responses from the loss of jobs and social institutions to a poverty of the soul. We become cookie-cutter people, standardized in our tastes and our views, willing to let big business determine our needs, wants and desires. The rich get richer, and the poor are compromised to a life of endless strife with a lack of services and chance for education. The middle class disappears under the weight of supporting both ends of the spectrum. Not only do the rich avoid taxes, but businesses have been allocated loopholes to avoid paying their fair share in a frenzy of globalization.

The environment is another loser in the destruction caused by the affluenza virus. We are using up the earth’s resources at an alarming rate, and nobody seems to care.

“Half of America’s wetlands are gone, and 99 percent of its tall-grass prairies…25,000 species are being eliminated every year…the world’s tropical forests decline by one football field per second…and temperatures are the highest worldwide that they have ever been in human history” (p97-98).

The final chapters of the book explain how to live with less, and be happier. The concept of less is more is not a popular one in our society. There is, however, a voluntary simplicity movement focused on a less stressful, more environmentally friendly lifestyle. The authors surmise almost 5% of boomers are choosing this lifestyle (p.183).

“The way to fill up emptiness is not by denying ourselves something. It is by putting positive things in place of the negative things, by finding out what we really need, and that’s community, creativity, passion in our lives, connection with nature. People help each other figure that out. They learn to meet their real needs instead of the false needs that advertisers create. They learn to live in ways that are high fulfillment, but low environmental impact” (p.184).

When we take the time to think of the cost of an item in relation to how many hours it takes us to earn the money to buy it, we put its worth into perspective.

Old-fashioned budgets are another beneficial tool in keeping our spending real.

Saving a percentage of our income to fall back on in perilous times is another positive step in reducing unnecessary purchases.

Look at what you have, and ask yourself how much pleasure it gives you and how much time you actually have to enjoy it. Was it worth the cost?

Why not make this Christmas a family affair. Turn off the television. Read The Christmas Carol, The Night Before Christmas, or How the Grinch Stole Christmas to the children on Christmas Eve. Start a family tradition that can become a foundation for generations to come.

Imagine making a difference in your family’s life. Imagine making a difference in the world. I wish you the best Christmas ever, filled with peace, joy and laughter. I wish you abundant health and being spared the affluenza virus.

In love and light, Gabrielle