More is not the answer

I'm trying not to lose the Christmas spirit and even though we went to a mall on Saturday, I still have it, though a little snow on the ground would help too. The mall was no more crowded than a regular Saturday any other time of the year but I did think we travelled farther south than Spring Hill. Throughout the entire mall and especially in Sears we heard very little English being spoken. The Hispanic people do seem to love Christmas.

We noticed that some of out favorite stores we closed or closing so we did get some good deals. I still don't understand why retailers can't just lower the prices all year long instead of putting all of their eggs in the Christmas sales basket to see if they are going to have a good year. I'm not an economist, I'm just a consumer so I must not know what I want.

But the thing that is pulling at the seams of my Christmas spirit are the television commercials. All of them are telling us that we need to buy stuff but the one for Carson's really drives me nuts, and it's on all the time. According to Carson Pirie Scott, in order to give joy, we need to give more, and by giving more we will indeed give joy.

More is not always the answer, I got more one year and it wasn't that great. It was funny but it was hard work for both the giver and receiver. It was one of those years when we picked names and my sister-in-law got mine. I think the limit was $50 and I got a gumball machine with an extra carton of gumballs. The "more" part was that after she bought the $15 worth of gum related products she made up the difference with $35 in pennies for use in the gumball machine.

According to my sister-in-law, banks don't have that many pennies in stock so she had to travel to several banks before she found enough pennies and after all that work, I kept a handful for the gumball machine and brought the rest back to the bank. I did spend a couple hours pulling out the old wheat pennies for my lame coin collection but even that got old quickly and I gave up.

So I guess what I'm saying is that it's not the gifts that matter, it's getting together with friends and family and if you find a gift for one of those people it should be simple and thoughtful. And remember, more is not the answer.