by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
Research has revealed that Brits spend over 2 working days planning and delivering their perfect Christmas celebration
British families are spending less time with each other and more in the kitchen and supermarket, according to a Christmas survey.
Despite Christmas being traditionally earmarked as a time to spend with the family, more hours are being spent planning festive celebrations and doing the chores. Over half (51%) of respondents admitted spending up to five hours planning the Christmas dinner, with a further 42% saying they will commit to three or four hours preparing and cooking the meal for the family, rather than spending time with them. In fact, nearly one in two (46%) also owned up to doing the cleaning for two hours instead of sitting down with their loved ones.
Supermarkets are also popular attractions for families as over a third of respondents (36%) confessed to trawling the shops for approximately four hours to make sure they have planned every mealtime. What’s more, one in five (19%) even tend to miss their family arriving for Christmas altogether, as they are too busy with festive chores.
The number of people catered for over the holidays can also have a big effect on the amount of work required. The study revealed that over a third (35%) of hosts tend to cater for an average of eight different people over the Christmas period, with a further one in three (33%) families arguing about a lack of helpers with the festive preparations!
Maybe, and no, I am not a relation to Ebenezer Scrooge, we should reconsider Christmas and how we think about it, and the same is true, probably, to a degree, with Hanukkah in the Jewish world.
It is supposed to be, in the case of Christmas, a celebration of the birth of Christ and not one of consumerism but that is the way it has turned out and most people seem to be falling prey to that.
Most people, in the developed nations at least, have turned Christmas in exactly that kind of feast that was celebrated by the Romans during this time, on the very day of December 25 in fact, which was one of debauchery and consumption of the highest order.
Let's get back into the simple spirit of Christmas and/or Hanukkah and stop this mad rushing about and the spend, spend, spend of this time.
If I am not mistaken in the original Jewish traditions any gifts given – now was that at Hanukkah or at the Jewish New Year – were to be hand-made ones, and that might be a good idea to which to return.
Oh, I forgot. Advocating something like that does, however, make me akin to a terrorist as advocating thrift and not spending undermines the economy.
© 2011
