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Posts tagged ‘gift’

Christmas is all about family’s happiness

While I was reading “Modern Childhood, Modern Toys” by the Gary Cross, Cross argues that Christmas gifts are used as a tool to show parents’ wealth. Cross’ argument bothered me because what I experienced, I had different perspective about Christmas in America.  I felt that American’s Christmas culture is more focus on the children. When I came to America for the first time, I lived with families who have very Americanized life style and values.  My host mom ‘Debbie’, started to make Christmas wish-list for her children as days of Christmas was getting closer and closer. We shopped together for children’s gift. When Debbie tried to find perfect gift for her daughter, Debbie didn’t buy the gift to show her wealth. And also she didn’t care about what her neighbors thought about her family. She was excited to pick up her daughter’s gift rather than thinking that what their neighbor might say about them. On Christmas morning, her daughter un wrapped her gift and on her face she had the biggest smile and my host parents were happy that she liked it. This was my experience about Christmas in America and many commercial films cover this scene of family on Christmas morning.

In the Wal-Mart commercial film for Christmas 2010, children are using various ways to wake up their parents. They jump on the bed, shake their parents and they even try to make dad drink water to wake him up. In CF (commercial film), Story delivers message about how children are happy and trilled about Christmas gift and also how parents are happy to see their child excited about gift.

At this point, I disagree Perri Watts’ opinion on February 3, 2012 “Christmas: Is It Really About the Children?”  Perri said “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.”  Even though the price of gift might vary depends on family’s wealth and financial stability, happiness  of unwrapping Christmas gift in the morning for children is just same as parents picking gift for their kid. And Christmas is all about family’s happiness.

and children love~~~ their gift