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It’s December 27th, and we’ve made it through Christmas. Cue the ads!

“Get the gift you really wanted at an OBSCENELY HUGE MARKDOWN!”

Take about twenty-five variations of that, throw in a few “last sale of the season!” ads, and you’ve got the next couple weeks in a nutshell. Before I get good and fired up though, let me mention one thing.

There are a few good things to buy this time of year. If you want a Christmas tree, holiday wrapping paper, a wreath, candy canes, or new Christmas stockings to stuff with toys next year, this is the time to get them.

As for everything else though, take a solid step back.

On balance, stores aren’t trying to give you what you want before, during, or after the holiday season. In fact the only thing stopping me from getting what I wanted, oddly enough, was probably the stores.

If you’re like me….

….you want a Christmas with friends & family, gathered around either lunch or dinner

….you want a Christmas without all of the artificial social obligations that steal peoples’ time, money, and sanity for the benefit of the retail stores

….you don’t want a quick trip to a store on December 23rd for some basic groceries to turn into a huge ordeal due to mobs of people that are convinced true happiness is found in pieces of injection-molded plastic from China.

….you don’t want to deal with navigating the murky waters of gift-giving, and the social obligations that stores try their hardest to create.

….you don’t want to be required by social convention to keep, use, or proudly display non-useful things that only got through your door in the first place because they were hidden in a paper-wrapped box with a bow on it.

….you don’t want to feel like you’re being pushed through the holiday season by some unseen force, being made to do things that don’t make any sense but that you’ve “always done”.

Yet even though there are many people who would agree with me on the above list, we seem to not get what we do want, and get (in spades!) what we don’t want, every year. .

This isn’t because the holidays have to be inherently stressful; it’s because stress is being actively manufactured by the retail stores. Stress creates a problem. “More stuff” is pitched as a solution. Stuff creates more stress, and the cycle repeats itself.

When the stores run the post-Christmas ads, it helps to remember that, if you’re like me, they can’t give you what you want – because their existence almost depends on them preventing me from getting it.

I’m staying home for the post-holiday madness this year. Happiness doesn’t come in a box; happiness comes from a minimal, simple, frugal life spent with family and friends.

Speaking of family and friends, how did your holidays go?