December 05, 2007 News & Views » Cover

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Want to Avoid Buying Gifts This Year? 

Switch religions

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It's the most nauseating time of the year.

Bright lights are twinkling, everybody has their hand out and family thinks that because you share the same DNA, you're obligated to buy them a gift.

Well, not this year!

I'm not celebrating Christmas. I'm not going to help trim the tree, and I'm not hanging stockings by the chimney with care. But most importantly, I won't be giving or receiving gifts ... and that's all right with me.

You see, while most people are going green for the environment, I'm going Buddhist to avoid the forced joy and over spending of the holidays. This change didn't just happen overnight and it's not a permanent switch -- just until the new year rolls in.

There's a very subtle art to switching religions at Christmas and making it seem real. Around October, I decided that it was time to explore God though a religion that didn't celebrate the birth of Jesus with evergreen trees wrapped in lights and tacky tinsel. The thing is, you can't just claim another religion around Thanksgiving; you have to show the family that you're serious about it. It's like when your boyfriend dumps you in September to avoid buying a Valentine's Day gifts but wants to make up with you in March. He probably started dropping hints around Labor Day, saying he needed space and such. Well, you kind of have to do the same thing when it comes to switching religions for the holidays.

When those gift-grubbing friends and family members stop by, engage them in a conversation about the Dalai Lama. If that doesn't work, wait until their next visit and lay out some Watchtower magazines and invite them to go door to door with you the next Saturday morning, at 6 a.m., to spread the goodness of Jehovah.

At some point, someone is going ask you what's with the religious conversion. This is when you break the news to them. "I'm finding myself, looking for a deeper meaning to life. And basically, I won't be buying Christmas presents this year."

Christmas hasn't always sucked. (Then again, there are a lot of things that used to be cool, like the balloons at the Macy's Thanksgiving parade.) But somehow along the way, nieces and nephews became ungrateful. Parents figured since they spent all of that money on tuition, it's time for you to give some of it back in the form of an expensive present. And siblings figure since you don't have children that you still owe them a gift -- even though you just spent way too much on their children.

This Christmas, I'm not worrying about such frivolities because my conversion has already taken place. Though my family doesn't believe me, it's true. I'm not buying a gift nor will I accept another sweater, turtleneck or unfashionable pair of shoes.

Christmas is supposed to be about spending time with your family, bonding over the birth of baby Jesus and eating a delicious meal together. But things have gotten so commercial and so materialistic, it makes you just want to skip it all.

So, until people start to realize just what the real meaning of Christmas is, then that's just what I'm going to do.

Next year I'll probably check out Scientology.

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