By Tim Porteus

A YOUNG parent told me this week he had organised a loan to buy Christmas presents for his two-year-old son.

It created a discussion about the pressures to buy stuff for our children and how, even six weeks before Christmas, people are beginning to get stressed about being able to afford it.

Later that same day, I was in a supermarket with my youngest. We had just popped in to get a few simple items, but I ended up with a very upset wee boy. The supermarket had already begun to display toys. My son had noticed them immediately because they had been deliberately placed at his level.

I eventually managed to distract him and we made it out without a major meltdown, but it just highlighted to me the pressures we are all put under.

I kept on saying to my son: “No, but maybe for Christmas.”

It was a tactic to get some immediate peace, but I realised I was building up expectations that Christmas is the time when all the accumulated desires for stuff are met.

We are made to feel that the value of Christmas is measured in the amount of stuff we acquire or give. I hate this and reject it but I am by no means immune from its pressure. I am made to feel guilty and every year I give in some way or another.

The psychological warfare in our minds has already begun. The new toys laid out in that supermarket was but the opening shot. Soon a ‘Christmassy’ atmosphere will engulf us as we do our shopping, designed to press our internal panic button that we need get on with buying lots of stuff, like a stressed squirrel collecting nuts for the winter.

I know I’ve ranted about this before but in February I spoke to a group of vulnerable parents in a course I was delivering. Many had huge debts yet had spent literally hundreds of pounds on Christmas presents, most of which were by this time broken, forgotten about or discarded.

One of the parents encapsulated it perfectly: “The trouble is it’s easy to realise after it’s all over that you’ve gone overboard, but the pressure is so hard to resist before Christmas. You’re made to feel that you are a bad parent or a failure if you don’t get all that stuff. It’s everywhere you go and on the screens. It’s impossible to escape from it.”

In the discussion the parents said they wished there was a course or some guidance on how to resist the pressure while still making Christmas special for their kids.

In a sense, this issue is not just a Christmas one, although the consumerist pressure is at its most intense in the run-up to Christmas, and even immediately afterwards with the sales. We have literally been sold the idea that buying stuff is what defines us.

It has been a conscious, deliberate and sustained ideological assault on us and our children.

In her brilliant film The Story of Stuff, Annie Leonard gives a quote from a retail analyst Victor Lebow: “Our enormously productive economy. . . demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction, in consumption. We need things, consumed, burned up, worn out, replaced and discarded at an ever-increasing rate.”

While this was in reference to the USA a number of years ago, it holds true for us here and now.

Christmas, as well as other seasonal festivals, have been made a festival of buying stuff.

It’s destroying the very planet we live on, it piles our homes with unneeded and soon-to-be discarded consumerist items (how many people have a clear-out before Christmas to make way for the new stuff about to arrive, only for it to be soon cleared out itself?).

Meanwhile, more and more of us are time poor and running about to pay for things we soon forget we even bought and are likely already in the dump or charity shop.

I was once told I was being a Scrooge when I spoke of this issue. But the message in Scrooge, when he realises what’s important, is that he gives his employee time off to be with his family, and a pay rise so they can eat; he shows kindness and shares a meal and social time with his family. It’s not about tons of stuff.

Our time together is the most valuable and valued thing we will ever have. I’d never say don’t buy presents, as I know a thoughtful present is a wonderful thing. But if it’s lost in a sea of other stuff then its significance is lost too.

What I think is important is doing things together and measuring the value of gifts by the thought put into them, rather than the price or quantity of them. And there are a host of local Christmas fairs taking place in schools and community halls all over East Lothian where many local craftspeople, artists and others will be selling locally produced and environmentally friendly gifts which have real value and are designed to last. It seems to me this is the best place to take our custom.

I know this has not been a proper story but, then again, in a sense it is. It’s the story of how our rituals and the meanings of our lives have been turned into market value, and we now often feel powerless or unable to step out of it without feeling guilty, inadequate or “a Scrooge”.

That’s how I feel every Christmas but I’m going to make a Herculean effort this year to practice what I preach. I’m not rejecting that ‘Christmassy’ feeling or refusing to buy presents. But I’m defining it on my own terms, or at least I’ll try. It’s about my time with people I value. It’s about putting in thought rather than looking at the price tag.

It’s also about understanding how terribly difficult Christmas is for so many people and finding ways to connect with them and show them some kindness and inclusion.

Maybe it’s just me, but I think that is one of the best gifts you can give your children and others you love.