It's beginning to look a lot like...something else

I think about this time last year my blogs included a phrase that I enjoyed using, but I can't here because it's not stupid cold in Charlotte. I'm enjoying it. The last time I blogged Christmas seemed so far away but now it's only...eleven days away. Anyway, I realized something about Christmas this year that I hadn't noticed in the past. I had heard people talk about it, but I either chose not to or wasn't in a situation where I saw it. It's the commercialization of Christmas that I hadn't seen before. I really started to notice it this year. At the mall that Starbucks is in they started playing Christmas music the day after Halloween, I thought that was a little strange then I saw all the people running around like crazy talking about getting gifts and how it's getting so frustrating getting gifts for everyone. Today however, I met someone and in just the few minutes between when I greeted her to when she got her coffee I saw the commercialization as clear as day. She walked up to me and said, “What can you give me that will give me the Christmas Spirit?” I told her what our Holiday drinks were and then her words really sunk into my mind as she decided what she wanted. She decided to try to find the meaning of Christmas in a Venti Nonfat Gingerbread Latte. So she goes around a mall from store to store trying to find “the Christmas Spirit” in the things they have to sell and samples and stuff. BALHHH!! Thats sickening. Has it always been this terrible and I've just missed it the past few years? Even if you aren't a Christian people usually are around family and have friends and that's what Christmas is about for them. It's not about what Starbucks or Macy's or Gap can offer you, but people live in that, and are okay with it. Is it just me or does that life seem to suck. What happens when Christmas is over? New Year is over? Valentine's Day is over? St. Patrick's Day is over? Are people really living from one Holiday to the next finding happiness in those few days and then just surviving until we can get another fix. There's a word to describe that it's called addiction. Have we really turned into a society with a Holiday addiction? Are people really that blind to what is happening to us. I don't like it at all. So I'm thinking we take back Christmas and let people know that finding happiness at Gap and Starbuck's is not okay and should not be normal for anyone.