All of this could not be further from my reality. My family doesn't celebrate Christmas. On Christmas Day, my house looks exactly like any other day, maybe cleaner, because I actually have the time to sweep it, and nobody is coming around to mess it up.
Today, that might be unthinkable. But to my parents, and my extended family, celebrating it is unthinkable, because they never celebrated it growing up, and they don't identify with it. To my family, Christmas is really just a day of rest from work, no different from any other holiday. Any attempts to make it more than what it is are construed as a waste of money, and met with disdain and disapproval.
I already know how this Christmas will be spent, because it is the same every year. I sit at home, and wait for it to end. Maybe I play a game, or I read a book. There really isn't anywhere to go, because the shops are closed, and all my friends are at their own family parties. If it sounds boring, it is. I would be lying if I said I didn't wish that sometimes it would be different. But you come to accept some things.
In a sense, I understand why all this is so. I don't identify with the supposed religious significance of Christmas. If anything, I would rationally challenge that Christmas is a pagan festival. But in the modern context, Christmas is not solely about religion and what it means to be a good Christian. The real reason why Christmas is important now is far less complicated than that. It is the same reason why the festival gaining popularity, and catching on with people of all faiths and cultures.
Christmas is a festival where it is okay to be commercialised, materialistic, and superficial, as long as you are happy, and as long as you make others happy. It is a time where the state of being happy and spreading love is not judged, because it is what you are expected to be. That in itself is something very precious, and for all those who would argue against the evils of Christmas and the inevitable shopping that comes with it, I would simply put it to them that maybe, we all just need that one day to just be happy and not have all that baggage that comes from doing so.
It seems almost silly, that in this age we have to be "allowed" to be happy. But the nature of life today rarely affords us time to be. If we are not working we are studying. And it is difficult to escape how busy we can become, if we allow ourselves to get caught up in everything we are expected to be involved in. There are those who would also argue that you can be happy just going about your daily life. That is perfectly true, but the interest of a capitalist world is in promoting a state of non-satiation, so you are constantly told that you cannot be happy unless you have more. Without doing so, economies would run into a standstill, because the production line never stops, and someone has to consume all those goods.
If you are wondering why happiness may be fleeting or superficial, it may well be because the pursuit of happiness has become the pursuit of material goods. You can't be happy unless you have the biggest car, the nicest house, and go on the most extravagant and ridiculously protracted holidays, buying up a storm wherever you go. You are constantly looking over your shoulder at others who seem to have more than you do, so much that you can't look at your own situation, and just accept what it is. It takes a very strong human being to tell himself the pursuit of material riches is not for him, because materialism is supposedly wrong. So you are being sent mixed signals. On one hand, you are told to buy all you can, and on the other, you are judged for doing so. Is it any wonder we need a license to be happy these days?
Today, I experimented with being a materialistic person. I threw all my conceptions of money out of the window, and just walked around Orchard Road buying presents. I shopped up quite a storm, and I have a buttload of receipts to prove it. All I can say is, it felt damn fucking good. All my life, I'd been telling myself I shouldn't spend money, that I should save it for a rainy day. But maybe, just maybe, I had forgotten that sometimes, just spending it occasionally is okay.
We all deserve to be happy, and life is too short to think otherwise. But more than anything else, I realised that I was happy because I was buying these gifts to deliver happiness to other people. Money by itself is hollow. Buying gifts by itself is also hollow, which is why you derive no happiness in buying a gift for someone you could not give a rat's ass about. It is the symbolism behind the gift, that you care about someone else, that you care about yourself enough to make that effort to deliver that extra little bit of happiness, that really matters. And it was a relief to finally take a break from judging how I used money for one day, within reasonable limits.
All this being said, I would still like to have that house in the picture. It does seem so nice, doesn't it?