Christmas still has the power of a being a beautiful catalyst, but has been widely perverted by all who seek to gain from it.

The 'Meaning of Christmas' is an interesting thing to watch being defined between generations.  In my experience of it this year the Grandparents bemoan the meaning of Christmas being lost in that 'does anyone go to midnight mass anymore?'. My parents run around making sure everyone has many presents, all food and party details are taken care of, spending thousands of dollars all told on making sure things are 'perfect'.  The kids play playstation and watch TV and play on mobile phones taking pictures and immediately uploading them to share (show off identity) on social networks while commenting electronically with many people not physically present.  Who has the 'meaning of Christmas' in the best context? Materialism and identity gratification are rampant, just in different forms.  Everybody is satisfying the same thing - merely in their different ways of extracting meaning from highly self-motivated pursuits.  There is a misconception between the generations that they are behaving quite differently from each other. Go a level deeper, strip away the specific manifestations of behavior, and they are doing exactly the same thing... Mainly missing the point of Christmas.  If we would just pool the literally trillion dollars spent on all of us who have ridiculously exceeded what is required to live a good life already; and give that money to projects intended to better the lives of those who don't have the even the necessities to survive with dignity... What a difference we could make.  If we would pool just a part of the billions of hours we spend planning and being together for a consumerism Christmas; and spend that time on the people who's experience of life is greatly deprived of our social abundance... Again, what a difference we could make.  Could our current experience of the holidays ever be scaled back?  Or, ironically, would we need a new 'world religion' to 'start over' the entire point of an awakened humanity and mass reflection on what makes us all of, and from, a single entity? 

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