You can buck the system

Even though it is so many weeks away from Christmas, retail industries are already preparing. As I am a retail manager, I am very much aware of the fact that there are 6 pallets of Christmas candy clogging up my receiving area, and Christmas trees and ornaments are already displayed, even as costumes and candy for the stupidest holiday ever invented are being sold in another place.

This is not only at my establishment, which I generally refer to as the devil's biggest retailer, but also at many others. When I was a kid, people remarked that Christmas items were up for sale and Christmas commercials were aired too early, because it was not yet Thanksgiving! Now it is not yet Halloween. I'm certain that when my son is about 8 people will remark that we are seeing Christmas products for sale and it is not yet Labor day. Everyone is trying to turn a buck, the earlier the better, but in the process what little culture we have in America has been cheapened and exploited. How many families could celebrate Christmas without presents? How many could still enjoy themselves without the biggest turkeys and the best decorations? How many people could not believe it was Christmas without a million useless toys?

This brings us back towards how we can live Distributism. In my immediate family we have very few presents, and rightly so, Christmas is not about presents. We are more happy being able to go to Mass together than with trinkets and junk. People always ask what to give, and really the best thing would be to pay some bills. If one wanted to be REALLY good there is a bottle of scotch from Balvenie which is aged 21 years. I've never tried it because I can't stand before God and justify that kind of spending with my bills. Nevertheless, Christmas would still be Christmas without it.

Lately, we are all being told to shop. After 9/11 Bush told everyone to go shop. When the economy was week Congress gave us a "stimulus check" so we would shop, now Warren Buffet is telling us to shop. We don't have any money! Oh, that's what credit cards are for. I forgot.

What we urgently need, as we enter this Christmas, is to do the opposite of what the enlightened ones have told us. We need to not shop. We ought not contribute a penny to the system, nor conform to the corrupt culture. Instead, we should put our money into small business, buy hand made goods of lasting value, things with utility, if we need them. If not, then by all means stick to food and make Christmas merry, but please let us not drop another dime in the system. It is in a gradual meltdown and I say we should let it do so. Let us show those that have money that what is necessary is to invest in America. You see, that is the thing of it, we hear so much about "investors", and we are almost commanded to "shop" so frequently, we should rather be asking which investors, and what shop? They are usually somewhere other than America. China generally, but also in numerous 3rd world countries from Latin America to Asia. That is where people seem to want us to invest. They only want us to buy, but no one wants to invest in America, in American workers, only in corporate swindlers who preside over wealth created at a pittance by the poor and displaced in the third world.

If instead, we invested in America, in American workers, in the production of American resources into wealth rather than strip malls and McDonalds, and furthermore, into products which served the common good, we would not be speaking of an "economic crisis" but merely hard times every now and again.

This Christmas, the Distributist thing to do is contribute as little to the service economy as humanly possible and go on with your lives. Make it about family, and not the worthless trinkets and games of Capitalism, which are meant to lock you in a trajectory of a consumer, and never an owner.