Christmas presents

"Too many people spend money they haven't earned, to buy things they don't want, to impress people they don't like." It's true! And then you have the variety: too many people spend too much money buying presents they don't want to give to people they don't like and who don't want them in the first place. I remember British christmas panic from my PhD days; Alex, my English office mate, would always get very stressed late in the year. All these people to come up with a present for! And he claimed that he was only a mild sufferer of end-of-year stress. Many presents aren't very inspired as a consequence.

The high street knows all of this, and is trying to make money out of it.My supermarket has shelves full of what they call "christmas presents". In other words: cheap, one-thought-fits-all presents. Is that really what you want to fill your house with? Is that really conveying warm fuzzy feelings?

And in this age of clutter, should you give people stuff that you don't want to give them, and that they are not to keen on? I doubt it. I think the whole concept of christmas presents has become a monster. It's very engrained in British society, so I don't think it'll go away any time soon, but I'm glad I'm Dutch, and I have relative immunity to that disease...