by Emalee Mounts

Created on: January 27, 2009   Last Updated: January 28, 2009

This year, around the holidays my family had a really rough time. My mom became extremely ill and was limited mostly to her bed. She had to have surgery just a week before Christmas day. Because of this surgery, we were running a little low on money. My parents decided that we were going to post-pone getting presents until later this year.

I have four little brothers and sisters all under the age of 13. To them this decision was devastating. We spent an endless time listening to "What am I supposed to tell my friends I got now?", "This isn't fair." and many more cynical phrases that their little minds thought up. This of coarse is a direct result from my parents buying us endless presents for not only Christmas but birthdays, Easter, and Valentines day as well.

Finally Christmas day came around and we woke up to no presents under the tree. My mom got up early and made everyone a big Christmas breakfast. We spent the whole day with each other talking, laughing, and visiting other family members. As the day came to an end I realized that this had been the best Christmas I had, had yet.

The point is that I think that our society in general has forgotten the true meaning of Christmas. When all that we focus on is giving and giving and the children can't think of anything else then the meaning of the whole holiday is lost. It's sad that Christmas is one of the most important and special Christian holidays and some kids do not even remember that Christmas was a day created to remember the birth of Christ.

For some reason our country, the media in general has this extremely annoying habit of ruining everything in our society that is good, innocent. They over advertise, over criticize, and over analyze every detail about the American life. If they wouldn't do this, imagine how many memories wouldn't have to be memories from your childhood. Your kids would have the same innocent experiences that you did.

You never hear of children waking up early on Saturday mornings to watch cartoons or playing bored games anymore. Everything in our society is bigger, faster, more violent, and more expensive. This is entirely at the hands of our media.

The media in our country is oppressive, nosey, and conniving as well. If only the mindless, ignorant people in our society could understand this when they supply the demand needed to support the product created from the media then this country would be a much more pleasant place to be a citizen.

So in conclusion, Christmas isn't just becoming too commercialized, it has been entirely stripped of meaning and value.

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