Ho Ho Ho

It used to be a season of 'bells' ringing in the lead up to Christmas but this has changed to 'tills' ringing in the shops as people clammer to offload their hard earned earnings.
It were ever so. If we remembered all the hours to earn our money and how quickly we spend it.

It's as if a fever takes over and we rush from shop to shop in a frenzy to buy this and that, things we buy because we can and not because we need.
How lucky we are to have disposable cash to splurge. There are so many who have no leeway no discretionary income who skimp and save using clubs to which they contribute a small amount each week in the hope that there will be enough to buy the kids something special at Christmas.
There have been occasions when these clubs have folded 'before pay out' leaving the poor women and it's usually women, destitute without the ability to find a suitable gift and made to feel inadequate because they could not do so. 
Of course it's all part of the incessant marketing which reaches into the minds of people, making them fodder in the competition stakes for what's in the wallet that has become the substitute for this 'season of good will'.
I have seen children on Christmas Day scrambling to be given yet another another gift from under the tree, possibly their fourth or fifth. The paper torn off, the momentary pleasure as they see what it is and then it's off to receive another from another Aunty, the last discarded for the new. 
Simplicity was the key to my own memory of Christmas. A stocking containing bits and bobs, the carefully wrapped Rupert the Bear Annual was always a highlight, keep it simple stupid as the mystique of Father Christmas lived on for another year.