I take offence to the greeting, “finished your Christmas shopping?” It’s not because of my religious beliefs, my ethnicity or any aversion to Christmas itself…it is because the words are empty.
No one really cares if I have finished my Christmas shopping—why should they? Do they really expect to stand around and listen to my woes of not being able to find some obsolete perfume my mom has worn for the last thirty years? Or to hear about the scads of money I have spent on everyone? I doubt it. The fact is, at this time of year that greeting replaces the hi-how-are-you-variety. To which ‘fine’ or ‘good’ are the stock answers because no one wants to hear how I really am. It is just filler to get through those awkward moments in passing.
Ellen Degeneres talks about this on her Here and Now (2003) dvd:
Even when we say, “How are you?” we don’t mean, “How are you?”—we don’t care. Just give us a “fine” or a “good”—a one syllable answer and move along. And don’t even say “pretty good”. That’s a follow-up question: “pretty good” “something happen?… I don’t… have… time to…”
Funny stuff because it is so true. In the past few weeks, I have been asked repeatedly if I finished my Christmas shopping and even though I haven’t, I just say “yup, how about you?” Frankly I hope they don’t have some long, convoluted response either. I just don’t care and that’s why I never ask anyone to start with. I did make the mistake once of responding with, “actually I’m not buying Christmas gifts this year”, which prompted a clipped explanation of my reasons why—then somehow foolishly claiming that we actually don’t have cable TV. I’ll bet he was glad he asked! It all sounds so radically different that people just don’t know what to say in response, and at that point I wished I never said anything, but “yup, how about you?”. It is a meaningless, empty greeting and discouraging to think that finishing one’s Christmas shopping is something to be touted to anyone who asks.
Let’s face it Christmas has become one long commercialized holiday where the expectation is to shop til you drop and outdo last year. There is nothing more repulsive than listening to someone talk about their shopping excursions; how long the line-ups were, how aisles were clogged with pushy people, all to buy another wallet for dad because that’s what he wants every year and that is what’s expected. When in contrast, donations for food banks are down, the homeless are freezing on the cold streets, and single mothers cannot give gifts to their children.