Sherry Chandler

Hundred Dollar Holiday

If not Buy Nothing, if you must buy, for example, books, then how about a Hundred Dollar Holiday?

Here are some observations from the man who is fast becoming my favorite writer on things spiritual in the United States, Bill McKibbon:

I’ve been called my share of names, but the only one that ever really stung was “grinch.” …So it was with some trepidation that I carefully reread my daughter’s well-worn copy of the Seuss classic, neatly shelved with Green Eggs and Ham, Horton Hears a Who and all the other secular parables. There on the cover was the Grinch himself, red eyes gleaming malevolently as he plotted the sack of Whoville. He hated the noise of the kids with their toys, and he hated the feast of rare Who-roast-beast, and most of all he hated the singing. “Why,for fifty-three years I’ve put up with it now! I MUST stop this Christmas from coming! But HOW?” Simple enough, of course. All he had to do was loot the town of its packages, tinsel, trees, food, even the logs in the fireplace. Even the crumbs for the mice disappeared back up the chimney.

But of course it didn’t work. That Christmas morning, listening from his aerie for the wailing from Whoville below, the Grinch heard instead the sound of singing. Christmas had come. “It came without ribbons! It came without tags! It came without packages, boxes or bags!” After puzzling three hours till his puzzler was sore, the Grinch was forced to conclude that Christmas came from no store.

And so I breathed a sigh of real relief. Not only was I not a grinch trying to wreck the meaning of Christmas, it was abundantly clear who the grinches of our culture really are: those relentless commercial forces who have spent more than a century trying to convince us that Christmas does come from a store, or a catalogue, or a virtual mall on the Internet. Every day, but especially in the fall, they try their hardest to turn each Cindy Lou Who into a proper American consumer – try their best to make sure her Christmas revolves around Sony or Sega, Barbie or Elmo.

…So the reason to change Christmas is not because it damages the earth around us, though surely it does. (Visit a landfill the week after Christmas.) The reason to change Christmas is not because it represents shameful excess in a world of poverty, though perhaps it does. The reason to change Christmas – the reason it might be useful to change Christmas – is because it might help us to get at some of the underlying discontent in our lives. Because it might help us see how to change every other day of the year, in ways that really would make our whole lives, and maybe our entire 365-days-a-year culture, healthier in the long run.

Not fair to clip paragraphs out of context in this article. You really should read the whole thing. Or purchase the book, Hundred Dollar Holiday. It would be a good investment.

Possibly related posts:

Holiday Book Signing

Buy Nothing Christmas

Fine old Christmas traditions

For your Labor Day holiday,

Just a bunch of crazies from San Francisco…

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