VISA Gives You Thanks November 10, 2011
Posted by nrhatch in Humor, Less IS More, Poetry.trackback
The rush used to start in November
With crowded stores and busy malls
Now, stores decorate early
As soon as summer turns to fall
Before little ghosts and goblins
Have time to “Trick or Treat”
Shoppers are regaled with Holiday Ads
Christmas Cards and Scented Wreaths
Christmas has become much more
Than stockings hung with care
For months, exhausted shoppers
Troll stores while carols flood the air
Holiday shopping and spending
Results in empty accounts at banks
And credit cards charged to the max
For which, Visa gives you thanks!
The Holidays come but once a year
Perhaps that’s for the best
After all the shopping and wrapping
Good consumers need a rest
Reconnect with the Holiday Spirit. Join S.C.R.O.O.G.E (the Society to Curtail Ridiculous, Outrageous, Ostentatious Gift Exchanges). Decorate a tree with nuts, seeds, & berries for the birds. Invite friends over for cookies, cocoa, and a Holiday Movie. Focus on the abundance in your life.
Aah . . . that’s better!
Related posts: Experiential Gifts * Gifts of Hope * Press “Pause” and Enjoy the Present * Joy To The World * Christmas Unwrapped * Green America Gift Membership * How Do You Spell Relief? * Christmas Gifts (Books, Photographs, and Artwork) * Buy American Made (Global Mysteries)
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Spirit Lights The Way 
Looks like I’m the first to respond…that’s because you’ve given me a gift this morning. So thank you! I couldn’t agree more, but I STILL tend to overdo it. I can’t seem to get this discussion started with my whole family and then before I know it…oops! So you’ve delighted me with this charming and very apt post. I’m going to share it with my family, and then we WILL get the conversation started. I’m smiling! Debra
Yay! I’m glad you’re smiling.
Let’s get this conversation started. 😀
I enjoy the presence of my family…the presents aren’t really that important though I do select with care. This will be the first one that one of my children will not be home as my youngest is flying out with his gf to visit her family…a sad one for me. And Thanksgiving which is my favorite holiday, my oldest and his gf have to work so I most likely (depends on their shifts) will not have him here for dinner. I told my hubby we are officially old now that the holidays look like it will be just the two of us again…ok, time for me to get over my pity party, but I vow not to invite VISA to it!
The holidays are a great time to spend time with friends and family . . . but often we are so exhausted and stressed that we can’t just relax and enjoy each other’s company.
Here’s to a stress-free season!
I dont believe in giving expensive gifts at Christams. Christmas is a time for family and friends and to be honest Christmas becomes more commercialised each year. More presents and more expense oh yes and more debt. My sister did not have much money one year and she asked me what I wanted for christmas. I pondered and then said well if you must buy me something I would love a decent potato peeler.
My daughters motherinlaw spends thousands on presents and trinkets and always goes OTT. She is def a Ridiculous, Outrageous, and Ostentatious Gift candidate. The problem with giving expensive gifts is the reciever thinks they must reciprocate with equally expensive gifts so it becomes a vicious circle.
We joke about it now when we buy our little gifts for our daughter and grand daughter.
I love that, PiP! A potato peeler. 😀
We have cut way, way, way back on gifts because most of the people we used to buy for already have TOO MUCH STUFF!
Last year, we bought Plant-A-Tree Ornaments for most of the people on the list ~ recipients got a small pewter ornament announcing that a tree had been planted in their honor by National Wildlife Federation.
My sister was a little surprised by my odd request but it was a practical present I really needed plus I knew it was only a couple of pounds.(so maybe a couple of dollars)
I like the plant a tree ornament.
I bought our daughter a pear tree for Christmas this year. It’s already planted (because we planted it) and in a couple of years time it will bear fruit so the present will be ongoing. LOL 🙂
Ooh . . . maybe she find a “partridge in a pear tree” on the first day of Christmas! 😀
Christmas has changed for me over the years from extravangant gift giving to enjoying a great meal with loved ones and hardly any gift exchanges. When I come to think of it, what I remember most about Christmas past is not the gifts but the warmth of being with loved ones.
As a child and teen, I loved the presents . . . the more the merrier. As an adult, I enjoy having a focus other than spending the day unwrapping countless (and pointless) gifts.
When my nieces and nephews were younger, I shopped for them throughout the year. Now, I send them a check so they can buy something they really need or want.
The point of Christmas isn’t gifts and materialism, but spending time with the people you love. Getting and giving gifts is nice, but it shouldn’t be the focus of the holiday.
Shopping is NOT the Reason for the Season. 😀
It’s amazing how early the decorations go up now. I love your suggestions.
When I see Christmas decorations up before Thanksgiving . . . it does NOT put me in a festive mood. 😛
Could you tell me where that tree is (sounds delicious)?!
🙂
Everyone will be wanting a Partridge in a Pear Tree for the first day of Christmas. 😆
So sensible. I don’t do the shopping stuff, and I am perfectly content not to. I do love to spend time with the kids and my parents. Giving the tree ornament/planter thingys is a fantastic idea. We have made donations to various charities in honor of our friends and family, too. So many alternatives to the gaudy, the ostentatious, that outrageous and ridiculous…. Great post.
I rarely visit the mall around the Holidays ~ if I buy gifts, I tend to buy them from non-profit organizations like WWF or Defenders of Wildlife or Green America.
And I also give the gift of information . . . through BOOKS!
The adults don’t exchange gifts in our family, so that’s a bunch of shopping we don’t need to do. We just have kids to buy for and they are getting old enough where we can’t afford what they want, so we’ll give them gift cards or cash.
Since I just had the brakes done on my car today, Visa can just thank me for that instead 😉
There’s always something tugging at our VISA cards, eh? Hope your brake job doesn’t break the bank.
Focus on the abundance in my life!?! What? How can I do that without stuff! I need stuff. Robot vacuum cleaner: need it. Blueray Player: need it. Ipad/pod/zod6: gotta have it, dawg!
Yo, dawg. Less is more . . .
Christmas doesn’t come from a store
Just ask the Whos down in Whoville 😆
Humbug 😀
(Come the first of December we’ll be listening to Scrooge on audiobook, Nancy!)
Yes! The BEST Christmas Carol of them ALL!
Bah . . . humbug. 😀
Is there a “C” word in here in early November? Oh yeah, there is. “Curtail”. I’ll buy that, but not with Visa. 😀
Smart shopping, Amy!
It’s crazy, I’m not spending a cent on Christmas!
I loved your idea of repurposing the Grolsch bottles to give as gifts with homemade salad dressing. 😀
Christmas is, to me, becoming far too commercialised. Nowadays people just don’t have the money they had in the past to spend on presents. Yet the shops stock up earlier and earlier to make the spending season longer and longer. Many have to borrow in January and February to cover their normal cost of living and to put food on the table. One day people will realise this is not what Christmas is meant to be about.
Christmas Shopping used to be FUN. After fully digesting the Thanksgiving feast, we’d decorate the house, work on newsletters and Christmas cards, and listen to carols. Then, in the Christmas Spirit, we’d visit the mall, shop, stop for a coffee break, shop, have lunch, and head home.
Nothing frantic. Just a relaxed day out and about. Now . . . I avoid the mall most of the year and especially at Christmas.
The year of the Cabbage Patch dolls (and resulting mayhem) is the first year I realized how off kilter gift giving had become. From them, until now, I’ve scaled back more each year.
I don’t buy into the notion of buy, buy, buy, buy.
Christmas will be different this year – having a family made up of Pagans, Atheists and Muslims I’m not at all sure what we are doing!
It won’t be about materialism, that is for sure.
Ach . . . ye’re aul o’ bunch of heathens!
Good on ye! 😀
😆 I do know it will be a time of having family time, irrespective of religion!
I expect it will rank right up there with “the best Christmas ever.” 😀
Nice post. Thanks!
Enjoy the Spirit of the Season.
We don’t have children, so buy a few gifts for friends and their children and then happily escape the madness of it all on our own to somewhere in the country to play golf and ignore Christmas altogether – as you say. Nancy, “Aah…that’s better!” 😀
That sounds wonderful, bluebee. One year, we went on a short cruise to the Bahamas shortly before the holidays descended in ernest. Aah . . . bliss!
Last year I decided it would be the last of all the craziness. I’d been paring down for many years but even still, it all seemed too much. I spend time, at different moments during the year, with those I love. I don’t need Dec 25th to do that.
I breathe and release all the craziness and spending back into the vortex.
walk in beauty.
Good for you, Joss. When we jam too much craziness and spending into a short time frame, it’s hard to enjoy the simple pleasures of the season. 😀
I find that Holiday spending frenzy quite disturbing… People dash from store to store grabbing and shoving… I’m glad I don’t like crowds… so I avoid the mad dash to grab. 🙂
When parents literally trampled each others to buy Cabbage Patch dolls for their spoiled brats . . . it opened my eyes.
Quoth the raven, Never More. 😉
I’m ignoring all Christmas advertising until the day after Thanksgiving!
I do too! One holiday at a time.
This year we’re thinking about making Christmas gifts more personal and homey by making them ourselves and sending them out to the relatives. It would be a different way for us to do things and I’d love to show my kids that giving this type of gifts can be fun too. We’ll see if they like it on the receiving end…
We get a package each year from my nieces and nephew in Colorado ~ the homemade gifts are mostly edible or ornamental. The caramels are YUMMY!
Oh, great! Now you’re really encouraging me to try it this year.
It’s such a wonderful message to share with your kids . . . to remind them that the best gifts are gifts of the heart.
Hear-hear!
We shall charge no gift before its time! 😆