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A Christmas arms race

Ahh, Christmas. A time for relaxation and rejoicing.

Sadly, Christmas in our house has become a time of ‘stuffocation’. My kids equate ‘number of prezzies’ to ‘happiness’. Forget gratitude and quality time with the extended family, success boils down to ‘has Santa bought more presents than last year?’ It’s as though we’ve accidentally entered into an unwinnable arms race in which we have to continually buy more stuff because ‘stuff’ is what makes Christmas, right?

The result is that I feel that I’ve been badly malled. Check the clever spelling here folks, it’s not ‘mauled’ as in what tiger does to you, it’s ‘malled’ as in what Debenhams does to you. And I’ve taken a severe one.

But enough is enough. So, in true Art of Being Brilliant tradition, I’ve switched my thinking. In the battle to avoid stuffocating to death, here’s a sentence that at first blush sounds the wrong way round:

The moment we’re content, we have enough.

Read it again. And again. Until it makes sense. The problem is that our brains work the other way around. They think that when we have enough, we will be content.

Being content first is the key.

In the western world we now effectively have everything we could possibly need. Our cup of abundance really doth runneth over. There is no ‘more’ to be had. As John Naish says we have to learn to live ‘post more’ and indeed that ‘enoughness’ is the path to contentment. In a world of enoughness the rules of the game have changed – if everything is available in abundance, the challenge shifts from ‘knowing where to start’ to ‘knowing when to stop’.

I love to hold on to the traditional meaning of Christmas. Yes, Jesus did have some cracking prezzies (although he only got three and they weren’t very child friendly), but he never intended to start a tradition that would eventually result in stuffocation and bad mallings.

So, the message from ‘Brill HQ’ is to be content with what you have and hold on to the simplicity of Christmas. I mean, who’d have thought that baby Jesus would have grown into that ruddy-faced whiskery old man than comes down your chimney?

Happy holidays

The Art of Brilliance team