The following is an excerpt from a post that I wrote for Shelovesmagazine.com The topic for the month is joy which is of course what the season is meant to be all about.
Tis the season of joy, or is it? As we move towards Christmas and the celebration of Christ’s coming, most of us are anything but joyful. One of my friends told me recently that she hates Christmas because she always eats too much, spends too much and commits to too much.
My friend is not alone.
The Christmas consumer frenzy focuses us away from the things that really matter and strips us of our joy. What we as individuals have come to see as important – individualism, status, and competition – diminishes rather than improves our happiness.
Consumption, not relationship, is the goal of society. Wealth, not happiness, is the measure of success.