Fifteen-or-so words that warm my heart: “Would you like to save 10 percent today by opening a (fill in the department store) card?” followed by, “You’re approved.”
It’s embarrassing how much time and money I’ve invested in “the mall” since the day I cashed my very first ever taxed and recorded pay check some 14 years ago. But my toes still curl at the thought of a J Crew catalogue cradled gently in my arms, and Christmas shopping — those same seven days in December that I spend every year buying gifts for my friends and family.
I know it’s a shallow habit, especially in these difficult financial times when so many people are worrying how they will pay for their next meal, let alone shoes and gifts and other luxuries.
I adore clothes — shoes in particular — to such an extreme that it actually pains me to go past a store or a mall and not enter. I even put off maintenance on my car for fear I wouldn’t have enough money left over to buy jeans and what are now my favorite pair of black ballet flats. Hence, for Christmas this year from my husband I’ve been gifted a lovely set of radial, all-weather tires.
I realize I’m part of the generation that has lived in relative prosperity compared to that of my grandparents’ and great-grandparents’. Sacrifice in my lifetime meant postponing a vacation to Disneyland or a family friend’s difficult choice between a country club membership and a boat. My classmates associated bankrupt with an aw-shucks sigh on “Wheel of Fortune.”
It’s not that our families didn’t struggle — I know mine did — but they sheltered us from their money woes because children aren’t supposed to worry about things like that. Perhaps if we’d heard them tossing and turning in their beds or screaming in their cars on the way home from work we’d be raising our own children to look at money and credit like the limited resources they are. Instead we have millions of terrified 20- and 30-somethings, patting their children on the heads at Toys ‘R’ Us, all the while losing sleep over pink slips, credit card debt and inflated mortgage payments.
Despite my regrets that Christmas isn’t coming with a size 8 pair of Steve Maddens, I feel somewhat relieved this holiday season that I can’t afford to hit the mall and the outlet stores. I thought I’d at least suffer some sort of withdrawal symptoms — little green elves climbing the walls, taunting me with enormous bags marked “Macy’s” and “Pottery Barn.”
But without the pressure I normally feel to find the perfect gift for more than 20 people, I’ve been able to celebrate the things that really matter. I slept in the day after Thanksgiving and played with my daughter instead of running to the mall for the early-bird specials. We hung out in our pajamas and worked on homemade gifts; I drank three pots of coffee.
I may feel differently by Dec. 25, but for now it’s the most relaxing holiday season I can remember.
Alexis Bacharach is editor of the Mill Creek Enterprise.
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