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Feb 3

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Christmas: Is It Really About the Children?

I believe Cross’ argument about the true meaning of Christmas gifts for children. Today, Christmas gifts are not necessarily about making the child happy, or giving them the toy they’ve been waiting for all year; it’s about keeping up with the Jones’ and making sure everyone in the neighborhood knows that you are wealthy and financially stable enough to give your family everything they want and more. Of course,  children will ask for lots of things, but many parents choose each year to get their children any and everything their child could even think to ask for.

Although it’s not blatantly stated in the Sega Genesis commercial below, it’s subconsciously telling the consumer (usually a parent) that if they get this gaming system, they will be the most popular household in the neighborhood, and it will signal to all the other parents that they are the most affluent ones on the block. The children will see the new gaming system, then go home to their parents and ask why they don’t have one. In an attempt to keep the love of the child, and show off to the neighborhood, the parent will usually go get the gaming system and a variety of games, thus signaling to the rest of the neighborhood that they too are wealthy.

Plenty of emphasis is placed on who has the most money, and who is living the best life these days. While it is considered crass to simply spend money on yourself and show off with your own personal items, it is seen as socially acceptable to bestow unnecessary gifts on children, so that they can do the bragging for you. That is what Christmas has come to mean.

Feb 3

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The Best Gift I Never Received

In Gary Cross’s article entitled “Modern Childhood, Modern Toys,” he discusses the evolution of the holiday season and gift giving, and says, “The new Santa clearly represented abundance.” (Cross, 60) While I never had Santa, reading this I quickly had a nostalgic moment of being ten years old and having received so much already that I needed a gift to top them all.

My birthday and Hanukah always fell within weeks of each other so like Christian kids who had birthdays on Christmas Eve or the day after, I always felt as though I was getting screwed over only getting one set of presents.  So by my tenth birthday and tenth Hanukah I’d had enough of it, and decided that if I was only going to get one big present it was going to be the greatest present of all time… I fully intended to rid myself of my bed and replace it with an indoor bounce house. For $200 I could have as my BED what kids longed to have once a year at their birthday parties! What could possibly be better! That’s when I saw it, there, staring at me in the Sunday advertisements from Toys’R’Us was the Blast Zone Magic Castle Bounce House, seven feet by seven feet wide and five feet tall.  It was perfect.

Blast Zone Magic Castle Bounce House from www.toysrus.com

My parents had enough sense not to purchase this for me regardless of how many temper tantrums I threw. Twelve years later and without serious back problems I am relieved they didn’t.

 

Feb 3

Christmas Consumerism

The meaning of Christmas has changed drastically over the years, from plantation owners giving their slaves a small gift, to parents spending an excessive amount of money on their children to appease them.  This new meaning of Christmas has happened for a couple of reasons, one being that society is becoming a lot more materialistic, but another, and a lot more prevalent, is what Gary Cross states in, “Modern Children, Modern Toys”, that, “The shower of gifts became a way of demonstrating personal affluence.  And it did so without seeming to deny the work ethic or ‘normal’ values of thrift. (Cross 59)” To explain this, Cross believes that the reason that people are buying so many gifts and spending any amounts of money on them, is that it is a way to show your community how wealthy your are, but at the same time it is considered ‘ok’ and not snobby because it is Christmas.  I agree with Cross’ thesis that parents spend a lot of money on Christmas because it is a time where they can do so while it is considered fine.  This is clearly something that is happening in modern day culture, because we see it all over the place.  While reading Cross’ article the first thing that came to mind that backed up his thesis was the movie “Jingle All the Way” (which you can read about here).  In this movie Arnold Schwarzenegger plays a father who goes to great length fighting off policemen, a mailman, and numerous other adults just to get this action figure for his son.  In the movie his motivation for getting this “turbo man” doll, is that everyone is getting one, so to look like a good dad he must get one for his son.  While this movie goes to great extremes backing up Cross’ thesis, it does so nonetheless by showing the world this is how ridiculous we look, and this is what Christmas has come to, a battle for who can get better presents where the parents are even more happy than their children when they get the toy, Just Ask Arnold.

Feb 3

It’s a Boy!

An article in The Sun by Bella Battle, announced that the couple who kept their child’s gender a secret for five years have revealed that the child, Sasha, is a boy. They kept Sasha’s sex a secret from teachers, friends, and family members. The parents, Beck Laxton and Kieran Cooper, kept their home television-free, only allowed him to play with “gender neutral” toys and alternated boys’ clothes and girls’ clothes. They reasoned that typical gender roles create stereotypes that prevent a person’s real personality from shining through. For the first five years of Sasha’s life, he was referred to as “The Infant”. His parents decided to publicly reveal his gender when he entered grade school and when the school told them the child would have to use the designated restroom for boys or girls depending on his sex.

Laxton explained, “I just want him to fulfill his potential, and I wouldn’t push him in any direction. As long as he has good relationships and good friends, then nothing else matters does it?”

Beck Laxton and her son are laughing together while showing off Sasha’s “gender neutral” apparel.

In our class discussion, we conversed much about gender roles and popular culture. We debated, for example, why young boys may not feel comfortable reading stereotypical “girls books” while young girls do not feel the same pressure. “Books are labeled, as strictly as school lavatories, ‘Books for Boys’ or ‘Books for Girls’.” (Course Packet, P. 165) The same can be argued for toys and clothes, as we learned in our class discussion. In today’s society, when we see cargo shorts, sneakers, and baggy shirt, we tend to think male, whereas we associate dresses and the color pink with the femininity.

The article concludes by stating, “As a child grows they develop their own independent sense of self that will include their own individual gender identification.”

I believe this is extremely vital to mention. Although I do understand the point these parents are attempting to get across, I believe their son may not benefit quite as much as they hope. In today’s society, as sad as it may be, he will undoubtedly have a difficult childhood outside his own home. He will likely have a difficult time assimilating in school and in many social situations until he reaches an age where he has been better socialized (outside of the home) to develop his own sense of self. A child must have the ability to choose who they want to be. Although these parents are trying to keep their son from being forced one way or the other, they also restrict certain “extreme toys” such as Barbie and G.I. Joe. This impedes Sasha from being able to make his own decisions about what to play with and, thus, the person he wants to be. It is imperative for children to be exposed to books, clothing and toys that are geared both towards boys and girls, however, in this extreme circumstance, Sasha is likely to be confused and may even have a more difficult time developing his own sense of identity due to his parents’ seeming repulsion for it one way or another.

Feb 2

The Berenstain Bears

The Berenstain Bears, a series of short childhood books that tells the stories and lessons learned of a family of bears, was one of my favorite childhood reads. Every night before bed, I would ask my dad to read to me about the adventures of Papa Bear, Mama Bear, Brother Bear and Sister Bear. Written by Stan, Jan, and Mike Berenstain, the series was first created in 1962 with the publication of The Big Honey Hunt. Since then, over 300 books have been written about the bears and about 260 million copies sold. The Berenstain Bears lived in a house-sized treehouse “down a sunny dirt road deep in Bear Country“. Papa Bear was the epitome of a father figure, as he hunted for the food, did all the laborious work, and made goofy mistakes, and Mama Bear was the wise mother who always had cookies waiting for the children when they came home from school. Papa and Mama Bear had three children: Brother Bear, Sister Bear, and eventually the small Honey Bear. The four bears generally went on adventures and simple daily activities, and through them the Bears, along with the child reader, usually learned moral or safety-related lessons. As Elizabeth Segel points out in her writing about Gender and Childhood Reading (65-80), gender preferences and stereotypes greatly dominate what books boys and girls pick out when given the choice. However, Berenstain Bears was one of the few series that appealed to both sexes, and therefore greatly helped its success. The series is known as a childhood classic, and was one of my most memorable aspects of childhood.

Bear Family from Google Images

Feb 2

Modern Christmas

In Gary Cross’ “Modern Children, Modern Toys” chapter, he shares his thesis that Christmas giving provides an opportunity for modern parents to show off their wealth and spoil their children without coming off self-indulgent over-spenders. (59) In today’s modern society, Cross’ thesis still holds true, as many modern parents continue to feel obligated to spoil their children through Christmas gifts, often because they feel driven to keep up with the gift giving of their friends, families, or co-workers.  The media leads modern parents to believe that their role in the Christmas festivities is to indulge their children’s desires and parents who do not fear being seen as lesser parents than their peers.  The expectations of gift giving in American culture are hard to combat, as many bloggers have shown the excess to which modern parents are spoiling their children because of culture pressures.   One blogger claims that the average American parent spends up to seven hundred fifty dollars each year on Christmas gifts.  Perhaps the most driving point is the fact that some gaming consoles have sold for as high as 30,000 dollars on EBay in the pre-holiday rush.  With parents spending in excess for consoles that might normally be in the 300-dollar range, it becomes clear that some modern parents feel the need to constantly strive for the best gifts to keep their kids in touch with the most up-to-date popular culture.  Cross even claims that “Christmas had long given permission to extravagance” (59), emphasizing the point that parents feel the need to bombard their children with extravagant gift giving each December. With the added pressure given by the media in commercials and television, parents are constantly coerced into upping the Christmas giving each year. The Kmart commercial from 2010, in particular, emphasizes a large amount of gifts and even places the family in a setting in which they’re surrounded by other parents to impress. Kmart tries to make the excessive gift giving affordable in their advertisement, in order to give all parents a chance to impress their friends through gift giving. Trying to represent the ideal situation, parents then continue to purchase excesses of Christmas gifts and are able to show off their love for their child to all their friends through the seemingly excessive spending. Through examinations in blogs and commercial ads, it becomes clear that Cross’ thesis about the desire to spoil children during the holidays as a means of emphasizing economic stances is still present in modern-day gift giving.

 

Feb 2

Shower them with Nikon, Xbox, PlayStation and Kindle

In Gary Cross’ article Modern Childhood, Modern Toys he draws connections to Christmas and the meaning of Santa Claus. In the times after the Civil War, toys and play became a more prominent aspect of children and their developing childhoods. When Christmas was finally recognized as a true holiday, parents began to shower their children with gifts, not to secure loyalty or represent any power differential, but to strengthen the “emotional ties within the nuclear family” (Cross, 59). As the toy manufacturing companies began producing more and more toys, the original idea of toys being handmade and born from the heart started to fade, thus the idea of Santa Claus came to be. Children would write to Santa in the North Pole with their Christmas wish list and parents would go to seek the gifts the children asked for, only if the children’s behavior had been good.

From the movie A Christmas Story: a childhood favorite that depicts the spirit of Christmas for a young boy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In our current society, much emphasis has been placed on electronic gadgets rather than the traditional knitted sweater from Grandma or handmade wooden trinket from Dad. Instead of transformers and comic books, little boys wish for Nintendo DS’ or an Xbox. Nevertheless, gifts have grown increasingly expensive and a strain has been placed on parents to provide their children with the perfect Christmas. Cross explains this strain as “Parents teach their children to believe that Santa will bring them heaps of toys which no one had to sacrifice or even pay for.” (Cross, 60) While a parent may be able to afford the Xbox 360, the games that accompany the console are still very pricey. In present day, a family’s wealth may be depicted by how many of these new era gifts are given at Christmas time. While the parents are not purchasing the gifts for themselves, or showing off their wealth in prestigious vehicles, all of the newly expensive Christmas presents will speak loud enough for that family’s status. In the commercials that air in preparation of Christmas, many of them this last year especially started to show mother’s (in particular) developing an obsession with purchasing everything they could without facing bankruptcy in order to provide their children with that perfect Christmas experience.

Some commercials went as far as to show mother’s competing with the made-up character Santa Claus, to prove that they no longer needed him to make their children happy. With all the discounts that stores give on the expensive presents, they could do it themselves. This commercial in particular shows the mother buying the fun, cool and most modern electronic gifts while Santa is trying to fit in a small wooden truck, that looks like it would have made a little boys day 60 years ago.

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