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I thought I’d write this Zen Helper appropriately early. You know, sort of be at the forefront of the ‘extended Christmas season’. Set a new record.

Foolish me.

Unfortunately, numerous people in my general vicinity have beaten me to the punch. By about three weeks. Yes, my title was squashed by two families living along my normal driving route, as well as who knows how many more along routes I don’t often frequent.

The one family has gone modest, stringing colored lights tastefully along the edge of their roof. But the other . . . their yard has over eighty Christmas-themed plastic internally-lit statues, as well as a tangle of lights, glowing stars, and nativity scenes.

No, I’m not kidding.

In fact, it seems like every year I hear people talking about how early Christmas advertising comes out. There are the usual complaints about how Christmas has just become a shameless gluttony on the part of retailers whose only divine Christmas wish is to part us with as much cash as possible.

People, in their usual way, mostly complain about this state of affairs. But some friends of mine recently received word from their relatives that their side of the family has decided not to do Christmas presents this year, in response to an article that blabbed on and on about how horrible Christmas has become.

I could see other people taking the same route – protesting the rampant consumerism by just sort of dropping out. Then we can laugh in the faces of those huge corporations when their year-end financials don’t look as good as they hoped. Sort of a ‘screw you’ to Hasbro.

But I’m going to propose a different strategy. If Christmas is expanding, why not let it expand? If I saw Santa statues in October this year, my hope for next year is that they’ll have them up in July. In fact, what would be the harm if we simply had Christmas all year ‘round?

No, I’m not being facetious here.

Instead of getting our loved ones gifts only a couple of times a year, we could purchase them a present whenever we found something they might like. It wouldn’t have to be anything big – maybe just a nice bar of chocolate, or something unique from an antique store. We could wrap these gifts, or sometimes we could just give them – all of a sudden, for no ‘reason’ at all, except that it’s Christmas. As it always is.

We could take post-it notes and write ‘I love you’ on them, and post them all over the kitchen before our spouse comes downstairs. Even ten of them would be impressive. And while we’re at it, let’s throw more hugs into the stew. Everyone benefits from hugs, and they take so little to give. This gentleman started a whole campaign — spreading love.
(A special thanks to Steve Pavlina for letting us know about this video.)

We could extend the Christmas spirit to helping others, just out of the blue. Hold a door open for someone. Drop off a bag of groceries for a family who’s fallen on hard times. Leave a five dollar bill somewhere for someone random to find. Tell someone how friendly they are.

If you’re feeling really daring, pay for the person’s groceries or gas who is in line in front of you. Trust me, it won’t put you forever into debt. Or call up a family member or friend, merely to tell them that you appreciate their presence in your life. No other reason. And since Christmas would be all year ‘round, we could do these things all the time. Maybe just do something ‘Christmas-y’ once per day.

We’d probably be amazed at how little effort it takes to make some magic for other people. And we’d probably feel pretty good about it, too.

Let’s stop complaining about how early the advertisers start the Christmas rush. If we can’t have Christmas all year ‘round, let’s at least extend it to the beginning of advertising season.

That’s my challenge to everyone this year. Upon seeing your first Christmas advertisement, make it the beginning of your Christmas spirit.

You might just find that it’s rather addicting.

Yours in never-ending holiday cheer,
Kenton

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 14th, 2006 at 5:07 pm and is filed under Zen Helpers. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site. Your comments will be queued for moderation and posted as quickly as possible.