It may seem early for a holiday post but I’ve seen Christmas stuff in the stores already and liked this so much I just couldn’t wait any longer to share.
“The Indian Helper” was an odd place to find 110 year old opposition to Christmas consumerism but here it is. And it could have been written yesterday.
THE INDIAN HELPER
A WEEKLY LETTER
-FROM THE-
Indian Industrial School, Carlisle, Pa.
================================================
VOL. XV. FRIDAY, December 22, 1899 NUMBER 9
PERVERSION OF THE CHRISTMAS SPIRIT.
———-
It is probably useless to lift a voice against the commercial perversion of the Christmas spirit.
The bewildering bustle and maddening crush in the great city stores give to certain people a thrill of pleasure, which they fancy is the Christmas feeling.
To see everybody emptying pocketbooks in order to make expensive presents which they can ill afford is in reality a sad sight.
The Christmas gifts which are the tokens of love are among the pleasantest things of the whole year, either to give or to receive.
But when one attempts to find some logical and ethical connection between the anniversay of Jesus’ birth and the monstrosities in advertising, the overwork of employees, and the colossal waste which accompany the “holiday trade,” one wonders that so few religious leaders speak out against the folly and the tyranny of the abuse.
Lynette's NorCal History Blog 
Joel Kroeker released a nice song online about this very subject, titled Buy Nothing at All.
I wish we’d all move to that. Wouldn’t the whole season be more enjoyable if we didn’t have to worry about getting the right gifts, getting them giftwrapped, getting them paid for… ?
How succinctly that is put! I would be writing about 4 times that amount, and not saying it as well. We just don’t do big-dollar holiday gifts around here. It’s more about the gathering together, and token (or jokin’) gifts.
See, you guys have it figured out 🙂
excellent. I often try to make this point regarding environmental and human rights movements, even the typical drabs of daily life…that people have recognized the problems of our society for a long time and have always been very vocal about it, but get shut out of mainstream media and written out of history.
Absolutely. There is so little that is really new (for better or worse) but the fact that unconventional thought or opinion gets censored or shunned by the “mainstream” population means that we are forced to “discover” the same thoughts and ideas over and over again. Think of how much further we would be as a culture/society if we could build upon these ideas instead of rediscover them with each generation…