Christmas Break Reflection

For my “Christmas,” celebration, I was one of those people who stayed with family, ate good tasting food and chilled. On Christmas day all I did was watch all the basketball games and eat. Some friends of my dad came over to add to the occasion. It was fun considering what we were doing. This year it my first time looking at Christmas and somewhat observing it. Due to my dad’s friend, she persuaded us to have this little Christmas dinner in our apartment. The food was good, but the presents or I should say, present was better. For Christmas all I got from my dad was 50 bucks. And it wasn’t even supposed to give it to me for a Christmas present. He gave it to me or as a, “here is 50 bucks, now get the hell away from me,” sort of thing. So all I did was take it and took as “merry Christmas.” So in other words, my family didn’t have a traditional Christmas. We had the necessities such as a fake tree, food, people over, and somewhat presents. But it wasn’t even close to what other families do. Going all out to get the best looking tree, decorating the entire house with stockings and ordainments, getting that Christmas mood, presents under the tree, and having a bunch of people. Mine was very small and more chilled out. My family kind of followed the Christmas way but in a very cheap way. This in its ways goes for and against the so called “American way of life,” that pertains to Christmas. The reason is that even if you don’t have a whole “parade,” for Christmas doesn’t mean you are bad but just mean you just don’t have enough money to afford it. But on the other hand people might think you are low in society because you can’t afford a banquet Christmas.
To add on to the idea that I ended on in the previous paragraph, I think that this connects to the dominant and marginal messages of corporate culture. I would believe that the dominant messages are to have a huge festival with food, decorations, people, presents, huge tree, and just have it be a whole big expensive thing. This connects back to the American message of being super rich and having money to get all these material possessions. Because if you look at Christmas through a different lens, all it is is spending money for other people and yourself. So in other words having lots of money, buy gifts for you and others that you are close to, and this results in more material possessions. A marginal message is for those people who are in middle—lower class. The people in these classes don’t have a lot of money to spend so they follow the message that “even though we aren’t rich, we can still make due with what we have.” Which mean that you don’t have to be rich to celebrate Christmas. That even though you will consume it won’t be on such a large scale, it will be like the small things such as family and love means more than an Xbox 360. This is a marginal message because it is something you hear people say in most places but not all which is you should celebrate Christmas but if you don’t have a lot of money to spend it isn’t a bad thing.