Glass Half Full: Resolve to revise resolutions
Holidays are warped in hypocrisy instead of wrapped in happiness
Happy New Year, JMU! Along with all those noble New Year’s resolutions to cut out D-Hall desserts and to hit up UREC more than once a week, I hope you all have decided to focus your personal goals on a less egotistic level. With the holiday season dwindling away and a cold front finally closing in, I feel the urge to bundle up—not just with my toasty Polar fleece, but with a somewhat comforting peace of mind.
I’ve always looked forward to the holiday season. Good food, family, time off and chilly weather: I could sing a duet with Julie Andrews about how priceless my holiday memories are. But I swear, if I see one more Bally Total Fitness commercial, I’m going to Tae Bo my TV.
This past month, a local radio station suggested that consumers wrap gifts in newspaper instead of purchasing wrapping paper for the holiday season. By doing so, one remains eco-friendly, saves money and is possibly a bit more original and daring by refusing to literally (and, of course, figuratively) buy into the market’s holiday hypocrisy.
My initial reaction to this announcer’s statement was akin to watching an elderly person getting tasered. No dancing Santa on my presents? No elves with wooden tools on the sticky tags plastered on my dozens of gifts this year? A huge part of my past holiday joy is to suavely don that cheesy Santa hat, prepare my Scotch tape and scissors and sit down for an hour-long session of intense present wrapping. So why did I feel less ecstatic and more estranged to the Christmas tradition this year?
Alas, we are creatures of habit. In what I’d like to call PPD, or Post-Presents Depression, we continue to challenge one another to a game of “What did you get?” Who cares what you gave? They’re probably taking it back anyway. And for New Years, we say “What did you give up?” Semantics say more than a million heartfelt old men in the e-Harmony commercials. It’s disconcerting to reduce the holiday season to material goods and quick results—and I think we’re all guilty of it.
Ah, good old American materialism. We clothe ourselves in it, we perfume ourselves in it, we sweat for it and fill out a million redundant romantic questions for it. The tree does look a little less exciting without all those pretty packages underneath, and I think people fear that the tree itself isn’t good enough—even without all the fancy-shmancy presents. And yes, that tree does function as a brilliant metaphor for the human condition around the New Year.
Trust me; you don’t want to know the anatomy of some of my New Year’s “resolutions.” So, how about just being more resolute in all that we do? I’m determined to find something more meaningful this year than vowing to make myself better.
We all want to lose that flab on the underside of our arms, find our soul mate and start putting our dirty underwear in the hamper on a daily basis. But what can we do as JMU students to improve our campus, each other and our communities? Of course, involving yourself in something humanitarian is a heck of a lot more noble than building or buying a six pack. New Year’s resolutions should not just be about brawn and babes.
As all those cliché Jenny Craig and e-Harmony commercials proclaim, here’s your chance, kids! “A new year, a new you.” In 2008, I encourage you all to warm up to some less narcissistic alternatives—charitable, ecological or otherwise.
Traci Cox is a junior English major.
