Keeping up with the Joneses: it doesn't have to be this way

My Response to the Oxfam Keeping Up With the Joneses blog post.

What a fantastic post and how true it is to our modern society. It always saddens me when consumerism has a complete hold over our lives. Take Christmas for example, there is a whole 2-3 month advert campaign around what you 'need to buy' for a perfect Christmas. That's around 84 days geared up around materialism for 'one perfect day'.

Then there's all the suckers who fall into this trap, over spend and then are broke for the most of January! Really what's the point? Surely being together, spending time together and having fun should outweigh having an iphone or a nintendo wii for the 'perfect Christmas'. This is one of the things I *really* hate about Christmas.

Also, if you discount the religious connotations for a second, the holiday is supposed to be geared around peace, forgiveness, charity and love. Where are the advertisement campaigns for this? All the charitable giving type adverts seem to take a backburner during this month (no fault of course to the organisations involved as they continue to strive and make a difference). I find this really saddening.

Finally, something a friend said the other day made me think to. This was in reference to shallow behaviour. She said "We surround ourselves with people who are obsessed with their looks, no wonder we spend so much time in the gym and start to adapt this behaviour" and this is true of anything. Consumerism, superficialness, status it's all based on your social surroundings. You find yourself starting to behave in that way, sometimes subconsciously until you read a post like this which makes you snap out of it. So thanks for posting this :)