Personally, my household celebrates the Winter Solstice as our religious/spiritual holiday, although we do participate in Christmas as a secular holiday...largely with friends and family. We have been known to exchange hand-crafted items, but we avoid buying things on credit as much as we can when lack of crafting time drives us to buy our gifts instead. If we do use credit, we pay it off well before the next holiday season. (Our Swiss Colony account has gotten a lot of use in the last few years; who doesn't like to receive free food?) In fact, there will be no gift exchange at my father and step-mother's house this year partly because the economy is lousy. Instead, we will be eating finger-foods, enjoying music, and catching up on family events from the last year.
Overall, I tend to think of debt as slavery; you are basically working for someone else whether you like it or not until the debt is paid off. I would have paid for my house in cash if I had had $80k sitting around at the time.
(I could have continued to rent instead of buying, but my mortgage payment was, and still is, cheaper than typical rents around here, so I count it as a win even with the debt.) As it was, I at least realized that the idea of a mortgage interest rate potentially going UP in the future made an Adjustable-Rate Mortgage a very bad idea, even though my lender tried to get me into one; I insisted on a 30-year fixed and was soooo happy for it when the housing bubble collapsed because I could still make my payments, unlike many homeowners with ARMs.
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Consumerism is rampant in this country, but not everyone has succumbed. For some of us Americans, the holiday season is still about love, sharing, and caring. Some of us are still proud to be Americans, even if we are not always proud of our fellow citizens or our government. We have our political and cultural issues, but every nation does. When you read about the trampling mobs in the Wal-Marts and malls, keep in mind that the media generally reports on the lowest common denominator...that's what is considered "news". "If it bleeds it leads," as they say. Fear and gossip are king. The folks who volunteer to serve Christmas dinner to the homeless or the shut-in elderly are lucky to get a 60 second feature in the Human Interest segment at the end of the news hour. That doesn't mean they don't exist.
Heck, my spouse and I are still using "dumb" cell phones that just make voice phone calls and handle ascii text messages (no images) because that's all we need and we can't justify the expense of "smart phones". Our phones don't even have cameras. *gasp* Not all consumers suffer from consumerism.
