Christmas past and present

Devon Warner-Fox, Reporter 12/16/2011

I have noticed over the past hundred years Christmas has gone through a huge change, Christmas used to be a time of giving gifts to people who appreciate them, spending time with friends and family, and being grateful for what they have been given. Now Christmas has become over commercialized, every body expects to receive expensive gifts, and are constantly asking for more.

The content of the presents themselves have gone threw a total overhaul also. People in the 1900’s used to give out practical gifts that were functional, like a coat, gloves, or scarves because it was going to be a cold winter. It also allowed the children to play out in the snow so they were thrilled by these things, but now if you give a child a jacket or scarf they just sit there with their hands outstretched expecting more.

A hundred years ago children's Christmas lists were a lot shorter; they consisted of a few items, some of which being wishes for there sick family members to get better, or just people’s general well being. Now children have a wish list five miles long, and all you hear out of there mouths are I want this, I want that, more more more

Christmas has also become extremely stressful for the adults who have to organize the events for the children. The Christmas season has the highest suicide rate of the entire year, and this can be accounted how to how the big name company's force feed us through the mouth how a perfect family should be, and most people can not live up to these expectations. Also people are expected to work copious amounts of over time to make money to pay for the gifts they are expected to buy for every one.

The American society might be better off to go back to there good old fashioned values that seemed to work so well for so many years. If children could be taught early on what Christmas is supposed to be, instead of letting them believe that Christmas is just a day that they get a ton of presents then the stress we put our families under would be cut tremendously.

Another thing, if we could convince big corporate company to stop pushing so hard on the working man to be the “perfect“ Santa then maybe there wouldn't be as many people taking their lives over such trivial things.

If people would stop to spend time with there family's instead of working all day, we may even find that there families would be happier with that then the newest version of the iPad or a new video game. Instead of spending a lot of money on gifts why not give a promise instead to call every week to see how our grandmothers are doing or tell our parents we love them, or that we will clean the house without being told. There are hundreds of ideas that wont cost us a dime, but are sure to make your family happy.