Question: People have demeaned Christmas as just a holiday when you are obligated to give gifts to others, even if the gift does not have much meaning or use, just to keep with tradition and the spirit of giving during the holidays. What do you say? – asked at “Ask a friend, ask Efren” free service available at www.personalfinance.ph and Facebook.
Answer: The problem with Christmas is not Christmas itself. If ordinary people celebrate their birthday, how much more should people celebrate the birth of the Savior.
It is when retailers take advantage of the vulnerability of their customers during the momentous occasion that the problems during Christmas begin. This is where commercialism takes its toll on revelers.
So how did people come up with the idea that Christmas needs to be celebrated in a material way.
Let’s go back to birthdays. Ask yourself when you started to believe that birthdays had to be celebrated with a party where the celebrator is supposed to be showered with gifts. You experienced it first hand when you were a child, right? The need to celebrate milestone events stuck as a tradition.
The perspective changed when you became an adult. When you started working, you had to give a blowout party to your officemates when you received your first paycheck. And it didn’t stop there. You also had to treat others to some snacks for promotions and other major achievements (e.g. house warming for your first home, wedding anniversaries).
Then life went full circle when you needed to celebrate the birthdays of your own children, their major achievements in school, their graduation, so on and so forth.
It is imprinted on the brain that happiness is like butter, it needs to be spread. The initial dopamine released in your brain by happy events is magnified when others become happy with and for you. And there are so many people and things you can be happy for and about. Some even go to the extent of borrowing money just to celebrate, like during fiestas.
Unfortunately, this “need to be happy” reaches its peak during the Christmas holidays with the multitude of people with whom happiness needs to be shared. In fact, instead of being a joyous occasion, Christmas at times becomes a stressful one.
To be efficient, but not necessarily effective in sharing, giving gifts in whatever shape or form becomes the proxy to spreading good cheer to so many. Enter the retailers who not only feed on this need but also amplify it. They also use the holidays as an opportunity to catch up on their sales targets for the year.
If you want a carefree Christmas, simplify by: 1) realizing that the season is for spreading good cheer and not satisfying your “need” to do so; 2) giving only what you can afford; 3) giving to the truly needy on behalf of those to whom you intended to give gifts; and 4) remembering that the Savior was born to wipe away any and all human needs.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.
(Efren Ll. Cruz is a seasoned investment adviser and Registered Financial Planner of RFP® Philippines. He can be reached at (0917) 505-0709 and at [email protected]. To know more about personal finance, please visit www.personalfinance.ph. To become a true financial planner, attend our three-day training in the Visayas and Mindanao. Details are available at www.personalfinance.ph/fptraining.html.)
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