{"id":12753,"date":"2015-12-02T17:17:14","date_gmt":"2015-12-02T22:17:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=12753"},"modified":"2015-12-16T15:11:21","modified_gmt":"2015-12-16T20:11:21","slug":"politics-as-usual-tis-the-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/politics-as-usual-tis-the-season\/","title":{"rendered":"POLITICS AS USUAL: Tis the Season"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Alison Collins-Mrakas<\/strong><\/p>\n

Well, it\u2019s official. It\u2019s Christmas season.
\nThe tree is decorated, lights are up, cards have been mailed and the baking has begun.
\nA calendar full of gatherings with friends and family to look forward to.
\nThe one little wrinkle in this otherwise glorious holiday tableau? Christmas shopping. The dreaded trips to the mall to buy Christmas gifts. Ugh.
\nGift giving should be a pleasurable experience, but when it\u2019s preceded by the horrors of the mall (or, God forbid, Costco!) in December, it\u2019s hard to get any joy out of it. Given that almost a quarter of their revenue is generated in December, retailers do what they can to entice buyers into their stores. So there are sales and bargains and BOGO day, all to get people to buy things they \u201cneed\u201d and \u201cwant\u201d.
\nNeed and want. Two interesting concepts in our comfortable context.
\nFor the many folks fortunate to have homes and jobs to pay for them, there\u2019s really nothing they \u201cneed\u201d in the strictest sense. Food, water, heat, home. Those are needs. A Kitchenaid mixer? Not so much. Regardless of how good a bargain it is.
\nSo, that puts most, if not all, the potential purchases firmly in the \u201cwant\u201d section.
\nBut what do we \u201cwant?\u201d If the horrifying CNN videos of Black Friday Shopping brawls are any indication, a lot of people apparently desperately want a humungous flat screen TV, and are willing to debase themselves in violent confrontations to get them.
\nI am not holier than thou. I did take advantage of some Black Friday Deals \u2013 for Christmas presents, not more stuff for me (though I was tempted by the shoe sales!). I went to the Bay. On Black Friday. I lasted a whopping 53 minutes. That\u2019s all I could take. People were rude, pushy and \u2013 well \u2013 a few other words I could use but this is a family newspaper.
\nThe store was a jumbled mess of stuff tossed here and there by folks who were grabbing things and then tossing them aside when they didn\u2019t want them.
\nThe poor ladies at the service desk were in danger of being smothered by the near mountain of clothes strewn about their counter by shoppers discarding the \u201cdeals\u201d they didn\u2019t want. The floor was littered with clothes that folks had simply dropped there.
\nThe two ladies who assisted me with my purchase looked positively exhausted, but they were still smiling and unfailingly polite. It was the Bay after all.
\nMy own family came to the realization that Christmas gift buying was getting out of hand after one year \u2013 when the kids were younger \u2013 when we couldn\u2019t fit the gifts around the tree. We had to stack them against the wall. Literally a mountain of presents.
\nThat\u2019s not what Christmas is about. We decided to scale things back and, since then, have had less of the frenzied buying and more of the family time.
\nYes, we still exchange gifts (everyone likes to get gifts!), but it\u2019s no longer the focus \u2013 well certainly not amongst the adults. And that\u2019s been a welcome change.
\nBesides, less presents means less trips to the mall, and that\u2019s always a good thing!
\nUntil next week, stay informed, stay involved because this is \u2013 after all \u2013 Our Town.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Alison Collins-Mrakas Well, it\u2019s official. It\u2019s Christmas season. The tree is decorated, lights are up, cards have been mailed and the baking has begun. A calendar full of gatherings with friends and family to look forward to. The one little wrinkle in this otherwise glorious holiday tableau? Christmas shopping. The dreaded trips to the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12753","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archive"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-3jH","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-09-12 01:02:06","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12753","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12753"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12753\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}