Today is Monday the 26th of October, it’s SIXTY CALENDAR DAYS to Christmas and I’m already sick to the back teeth of hearing about it. The cabling and supports are already up on the main shopping streets just waiting for the bulb laden monstrosities that passed for street decorations to be plugged in. The shop stockrooms are bursting at the seams with faux festive cheer. Everywhere around the country there’s already the quite rustle of dusty carrier bags and boxes of decorations creeping out of storage.
Worse than that though, and less than ten feet from where I’m sitting, there are two of the office harridans my work colleagues are sitting discussing what their mercenary brats are demanding for Christmas this year. I’ve written before that I think childhood, and life in general, is becoming far too commercial and mercenary. I actually think that I might actually have found the epitome of what I’m talking about in these two women and their kids.
The elder of the two women has a pair of kids aged nine and three. Seemingly the oldest kid wants, in order of desire, a laptop, a Nintendo Wii with Wii Fit Plus, a mobile phone. The three year old is more modest in his ambitions and only wants a Thomas the tank engine DVD set, but before you go aw, that’s not so bad, bear in mind that he also wants a flat screen LCD telly to watch them on.
The other woman’s kids are even worse. They both want laptops, and along with their laptops one wants an iPhone and the other one wants an iPod. What makes this so much worse is the fact that the kids in question are only four and three. They’re not even old enough to know what capitalism is, let along old enough to be the greedy little consumers of high tech goods that the world seems to be transforming them into. Kids of that age should be wholly concerned with two things in my opinion: enjoying a relatively carefree existence and getting their schoolwork done. Even then I would put the emphasis firmly on the former. There will be plenty of time for conspicuous consumption, rampant debt and financial suicide when they’re old enough to wipe their own arses without expecting a round of applause.
What the hell is a four year old going to do with an iPhone anyway?
I know that when I was young I was probably just as demanding as a child. I desperately demanded stuff that was well beyond my parents capabilities to afford and in my defence I didn’t understand money any better than a modern wean does. As a result I can excuse their excessive demands. They’re young and impressionable, they have older siblings or relatives that have fancy things and they want them too. They’re bombarded with adverts on the TV and internet telling them that they’re not cool if they don’t have the latest thing (only £699.99 plus postage and packing).
Personally I think the parents need educated far more than the kids. I don’t think it’s bad for children to have wildly unattainable desires for expensive toys and items, but I do believe that this should be tempered by their parents. Kids should learn that just because they want something that doesn’t mean that they get it. The real world doesn’t work like that, and nether should theirs. Parents shouldn’t be getting into debt to get nine year olds an iPhone or running here there and everywhere to get them exactly the right kind of toy. The giving of gifts should be about showing affection and even love for the family and not a way to increase their already hollow yet cluttered existances.
Remember that old war cry of mother’s everywhere: “I want doesn’t get.” I think it should be applied with a vengeance to many of today’s kids. Maybe then we can all get back to enjoying Christmas as a season of goodwill and cheer instead of the three month long consumerist nightmare it’s become.