{"id":78,"date":"2008-12-22T21:46:12","date_gmt":"2008-12-23T02:46:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/irishbeat.com\/thecraic\/?p=78"},"modified":"2008-12-22T21:46:12","modified_gmt":"2008-12-23T02:46:12","slug":"christmas-as-it-should-be","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/irishbeat.com\/thecraic\/2008\/12\/christmas-as-it-should-be\/","title":{"rendered":"Christmas as it should be"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>With all this recent commentary about the state of affairs in our economy, I couldn&#8217;t help but wonder what Christmas would be like if we had stayed with the traditions of 50, 75, or 100 years ago. I&#8217;m not old enough to have experienced a Christmas then, but in what I can see from the media, it seems like Christmas sure was simpler and more focussed on\u00c2 religious\u00c2 and family traditions. Maybe there were a couple gifts, but not this orgy of packages under the tree. Sounds kinda nice.<\/p>\n<p>\u00c2 <\/p>\n<div style=\"width: 270px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"Too many presents\" src=\"http:\/\/www.sfgate.com\/blogs\/images\/sfgate\/parenting\/2007\/12\/27\/toy-pile260x257.jpg\" alt=\"Pile o crap\" width=\"260\" height=\"257\" \/><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Pile o crap<\/p><\/div>\n<p>With the\u00c2 economy\u00c2 in the state it&#8217;s in, it feels like we&#8217;re having Christmas shoved down our throats\u00c2 more than ever by the corporate\u00c2 greedy. The advertisers are playing into our attraction for a good bargain and selling us more crap that we really don&#8217;t need. I think it&#8217;s a good pill for the economy to take if, as Americans and consumers in general, we can learn to settle back into a simpler lifestyle, enjoy Christmas and the holidays for what they are and stop spending more than we have and buying more than what we need. \u00c2 And maybe we might even be able to balance our own budgets.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>With all this recent commentary about the state of affairs in our economy, I couldn&#8217;t help but wonder what Christmas would be like if we had stayed with the traditions of 50, 75, or 100 years ago. I&#8217;m not old enough to have experienced a Christmas then, but in what I can see from the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-78","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-events","category-irish-family"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/irishbeat.com\/thecraic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/irishbeat.com\/thecraic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/irishbeat.com\/thecraic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/irishbeat.com\/thecraic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/irishbeat.com\/thecraic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/irishbeat.com\/thecraic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":79,"href":"http:\/\/irishbeat.com\/thecraic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78\/revisions\/79"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/irishbeat.com\/thecraic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/irishbeat.com\/thecraic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/irishbeat.com\/thecraic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}