Over 6,000 And Counting

As kids, waiting for Christmas to arrive seemed like an eternity.  To help count the days, my brother and I took turns opening the little paper doors on an advent calendar that was hung in the kitchen.  Behind each door was a simple seasonal drawing but it filled us with such a sense of wonder.  The final door always revealed a depiction of the baby Jesus but our minds were too focused on opening presents to dwell on its meaning for very long.

Before going to bed on Dec. 24th, we would take one last look at the empty Christmas tree knowing our long wait was almost over.  More often than not, my brother and I would wake up around 5 AM and sneak downstairs to see all the presents that miraculously appeared under the tree.  After checking out the name tags on a few gifts, we crept back into bed eagerly awaiting the new day's dawn.  At the time, we didn't fully appreciate all that our parents did to make the holiday so very special for us.

Back then, Transformers were very popular toys and recently, I looked some of them up on the internet.  My research opened a bottomless can of worms because in addition to all the original toys we used to play with, there were limited edition models, variants from foreign markets, reissues, redesigns, and special mail order only versions that I never knew existed.  Even unnamed Transformers appearing in the 1980s cartoon for only a few seconds have been turned into toys complete with character names and backstories.  It had me wondering how many individual Transformers were out there.  I couldn't find a definitive number but a few websites said over 6,000 and counting.  Such a display of materialism made my heart sink.

Okay, now you're just making stuff up.

I may have enjoyed playing with these toys as a kid, but trying to purchase them for Christmas was a huge burden for my parents.  Between Star Wars, G.I. Joe, and Transformers, the toy companies were placing a lot of unrealistic desires into our little minds.  Do parents risk seeing disappointment in their kids' faces if a toy they ask for is left off of Santa's list?  What about all the joy they'll express when that favorite toy is under the tree?  Clearly, there's a lot of psychology that goes into the commercialization of Christmas but the bottom line is always the same:  How do we make money off the holiday?

When my mother was a child, Christmases were much more humble.  Getting an orange in your stocking was a real treat since the fruit wasn't widely available at the time.  Everyone survived not having armies of plastic action figures or the latest talking doll because they were never told they needed them in the first place.  My uncle once said, “We were poor but we never felt poor.”  Happiness or disappointment wasn't as closely tied to the buying and selling of stuff as it is now.

Yet even back then, some worried about the increasing commercialism starting to overtake the true meaning of the holiday.  Stan Freberg's Green Chri$tma$ may have been released in 1958, but its message is more relevant than ever.  Along those same lines was Ode To Christmas by local television personality Chuck Kraemer.  The feature which aired during the 1980s on WCVB was a lengthy list of brand names and products creatively strung together but ending with the question, “Good Lord.  What have we done to Christmas?”

A song so accurate, it was banned for many years.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZ44t3UDjGs

If it wasn't for A Charlie Brown Christmas, I don't think I'd hear mainstream society utter one word about the holiday's true meaning.  The season is filled with news reports about shopping and that “must have” gadget of the year.  There's the obligatory interview with a shopping mall representative and when sales are down, headlines decry the “retail woes” plaguing the country.  If Charlie Brown was trying to warn us about the commercialization of Christmas, I don't think many people got the message.  Now we see larger and larger holiday light displays that have nothing to do with Jesus.  Good grief!

Oh, no.  My own neighbor gone commercial.  (There's even an inflatable Snoopy at far left)

As Christians we are told to travel light because possessions have a tendency to weigh our souls down especially if we let things get out of hand.  A few people are actually trying to acquire all 6,000+ Transformers and their collections take up entire rooms.  I look at the two boxes of Transformers that are stored in my basement and feel manipulated.  When Hasbro wanted to sell us a whole new line of Transformers, they decided to kill off many beloved older characters in 1986's The Transformers: The Movie.  The film's unexpected violence upset a lot children including me and I stopped collecting the toys shortly thereafter.  If they had no qualms about shattering a kid's fantasy world, what else didn't they care about?

It's odd living in a society where the economy would collapse if everyone started celebrating Christmas in humble but meaningful ways.  Christ's teachings don't sell 6,000+ Transformers but if we are to untangle commercialism from the true meaning of the holiday, then maybe we should ask ourselves if all these material possessions give us lasting happiness.  Today's much desired Christmas gifts just might end up as long-forgotten clutter in your basement.