Hear Hear.
How well trained is everyone else, regarding Xmas?
Although not Christians, my family practices the tradition of gift giving/receiving religiously. Indeed, almost every year my children insist on asking "What can I buy you for Xmas?"
To which the obvious answer is, if I so obviously need nothing, then that's what you should buy.
Cui Bono? Only the retailers.

I watched a report how the 20 somethings were rushing to the sales for "shoes and handbags" etc... designer anything. A bag is a bag is a bag...

This year we gave gift vouchers and I also made up little bags of "bits and pieces" - a torch, "store and go", digital key ring etc. My adult kids loved going thru the bag. My son said he remembered when they were young and I would make up a bag each with the usual "jocks and socks" etc. He said he was going to do the same with his kids. It seems the "little useful things" are more exciting than the big ticket items (which I could never aford anyway).

A book called "Spirit Level" is a great read. It shows how a countries level of happiness does not "continue" to increase with its level of affluence. It reaches a certain point and then after that other things kick in like greed and diseases such as heart attack and obesity.

I remember as a child longing for xmas or birthday, because that was the only time I received presents - and they were simple things as my parents were quite poor.

The one thing that still brings a warm and happy memory at xmas time is sinking my teeth into a juicy peach or nectarine. These were a special purchase at Xmas time as a child.

But each generation will find its own level.

What a strange article.

First it suggests we are all selfish, indulging ourselves in "things". I assume the suggestion is we should all be more frugal.

Then we finish with the grand kids presents.

One involved in "equine studies". Is there anything more self indulgent in this day & age, than playing around with horses.

When my kids went show jumping I considered I was being very indulgent, funding what was not only very expensive but probably the most useless sport in which they could indulge.

They could have played golf, or tennis, much cheaper, & sports which, if they were any good, could have provided them with enough funds to keep me in a comfortable old age. After all, with the cost of their horses, I was unable to save for it.

The second is going on a sail training trip. This is just what you do when you have everything you can desire, & are a little bored. It is not the activity for those living on the vegetables they grow, out the back of their do it yourself shack, on a lifestyle block in poor-ville.

When I wanted to go sailing I bought an old run down yacht, taught my self how to repair it, & lived on it to reduce my living costs enough to be able to do so. I then used it to transport me, & my gear, to many more isolated locations, where my somewhat agricultural skills, some obtained in rebuilding said yacht, were required, & could provide me with a living.

I guess we all have different ideas of what is a lot of possessions, & what is self indulgence.

Just to drag some gender politics into it, the (female) author forgot to mention that ninety percent of the shoppers that turned her off were women. How many men, I wonder, have dozens of pairs of shoes (to go with their handbag collections and ever-morphing expensive hairdos) or buy cute bags to put presents in (without a pang)?
Of course men are into much more substance(able) abuse, they see through the shallowness of consumerism (some of them) and prefer to get drunk, stoned, or just suicide.
<How did we get to this stage, where gifts are unwanted, and in such profusion that we sell them just to be rid of them?>

That is what life is reduced to; the ever-renewing commodity which, even with blue ray or extra sugar, somehow just doesn't seem to satisfy..
Here's a radical thought, maybe we were made for better things than consumption for its own sake..?
Sorry, I get off on these idealistic tangents..