Resolved: A Year Without Shopping

In 2007 and 2006, members of a San Francisco group pledged not to buy anything new. I don't know if they succeeded, but I suspect we'll be hearing about them in coming days.

I think it’s a charming idea, because I dislike shopping. For those who enjoy recreational shopping, and certainly for those who are addicted, the idea is far-fetched at best.

One of the fascinating issues that comes up for me is how much better we are at spending money than investing it, even though the decisions in both cases are similar. I’ll talk about this some other time. Today, at the start of a new year, I want to talk about choices.

The depth and breadth of our choices how to spend money are mind-numbing, even if we know what we’re shopping for. A shirt. A computer. A CD. Even a cup of coffee.

We have a similar plethora of choices just about anywhere we turn. Movies, books, online videos, news sources, restaurants, places to walk, cable channels, radio stations, satellite radio channels, internet radio channels, and so on.

With so many choices, it’s easy to get neurotic and begin worrying that we’re missing something important. And while we’re worrying about that, we forget to enjoy what is right in front of us.

This is what is compelling about the San Francisco group. Their decision to not pursue new stuff forces them to appreciate again and again what is in front of them, and maybe to savor life.

Life is, after all, about savoring, not accumulation.

Knowing Your Place

Christmas is a time when many of us reflect on our aspirations and remember that we aren't permanently assigned a place in this life.

That's why I've never it liked the expression "know your place." When someone says something about the need to “know one’s place,” he is saying that there is some kind of absolute hierarchy, and that it is the highest priority that each of us know our place in it.

This is like dogs at the local dog park. When a new dog arrives, all the dogs are nervous until it is clear exactly where this dog fits in the hierarchy. Sometimes dogs get so nervous with the uncertainty that they growl, bark or even fight.

We seem to both crave openness and honesty and loathe it, even at the top of the hierarchy. We want people to “be themselves”, but then they do something we don’t like and we wish they were someone else.

The question I’m dying to ask is: “If I can’t be myself, who can I be?”

From this comes the conundrum of our lives: It takes much courage to be ourselves, yet we have no choice about it. If we want to live the life we were born into.

Tannenbaum

We brought our Christmas tree home last Thursday. It's gloriously unadorned in our living room. We are wondering if adding decorations will improve anything.

It leans a little. It's drinking water, dropping needles and smelling good.

My wife and I are very sympatico when we choose a tree. It takes about 45 seconds. We look at one tree and the trees on either side of it and say "we'll take that one."

We both have more or less accepted the absolute truth that no tree will look the same at home as it does on the lot. And we know that the trees are alike in that they all have idiosyncracies--holes, dead places, crooked branches. They're all like that. Sometimes the "defects" don't show, but they're there.

Some folks seek the perfect Christmas tree just as they seek the perfect “Christmas experience”--happy, well-adjusted family; warm feelings over eggnog around the fire; the joyful anticipation and fulfilled promise they may have known on previous Christmases.

As much as we hunt for the “perfect” tree or dream of the "perfect" Christmas, things will likely not work out as we want. This is tough for us.

We may come to accept that trees are not perfect, but it's much harder to accept that life doesn't look the way we want, at Christmas as much as any other time. Things are not as easy for us as we’d like. Our kids make bad decisions. Someone has an accident. Someone gets very sick. Someone lets us down or betrays us.

What is wonderful, though, is that Christmas holds such potential for surprise. We may just find ourselves experiencing something in a new way, or being moved unexpectedly. If we let down our guard a bit, and haul that defective tree into the house, even though it’s already shedding needles everywhere.

70 degrees at Christmas

I don’t think I’ll ever adjust to Southern California weather in December. Even though I've lived here for 29 years.

Every year I remember the crisp coldness and sometimes snow that Christmas brought to Maryland when I was growing up. Notice I said “remembering.” This is different from “longing for.”

Remembering is an important part of the season. More interesting than this, though, is that most of the world (including the Middle East) does not associate snow or cold weather with this time of year. This reminds us that our Christmas traditions originate in Europe and northeastern America.

It’s like our favorite carols. Almost all of them originate in the nineteenth century (and in Europe or America). People celebrated Christmas for 1800 years before any of them were written.

Yet the carols we hear over and over seem to be a fixed tradition. Notice that new carols (and there are many, many excellent ones) are never permanently added to our celebration. New popular music for Christmas may be with us for a few years, but our core favorites never change.

I think the specific traditions we associate with Christmas are more important to us culturally than spiritually.

The Expected Holiday Hassle?

Last year we did Christmas a bit differently. We skipped most of “pre-Christmas.”

We deliberately did no decorating, bought no presents, put up no tree, and sent no cards for most of December. Instead, we spent three weeks at a slow pace: reading, walking, talking and watching the ocean. We did no preparation, and we didn’t seem to have any anxiety about it.

At the end of those three weeks, just before Christmas, we went out, bought a tree and a few presents and came home to enjoy a few hours decorating and watching the cats climb the tree. We had a nice meal and opened presents on Christmas Day and sent out New Years greetings to our friends and family a couple days later.

This can be a meaningful time of year to visit with friends and family, and enjoy some good food and time off from work. But often our expectations get in the way.

We wind up expecting so much--from ourselves, mostly--that the season is defined by stress grinding us for weeks. Why do we do this to ourselves?