Outsourcing Christmas

Would you pay someone to put up your Christmas lights, shop for and wrap gifts, or address and mail your Christmas cards? According to an article at MSNBC (More cash, less time means holiday outsourcing), some Americans are paying hundreds if not thousands of dollars for other people to hang lights, unpack decorations, stand in line at the post office, even shop and wrap their gifts.

For Darla D’Amato, lightening up means letting someone else climb a ladder to hang Christmas lights on her family’s new 5,600 square-foot home in Katy, Texas. She paid $2,200 for a crew of people to hang Christmas lights and later take the lights down and store them until next Christmas. She said her new house is too tall for her husband to hang the lights, but having Christmas lights is a tradition in her family.

Most of the clients who hire Books aren’t necessarily wealthy families or busy executives, but rather middle-class stay-at-home mothers. “It’s difficult to take a child to the store to go shopping, and they realize they just can’t do it themselves,” she said.

Has Christmas really become so impersonal that it is now acceptable to have someone do all of your shopping and decorating for you? It is particularly sad when the "tradition" of having Christmas lights has devolved into paying someone else $2,200 to put them up and take them down for you.

Some people really need to get over themselves.

"Christmas is not a time nor a season, but a state of mind. To cherish peace and goodwill, to be plenteous in mercy, is to have the real spirit of Christmas."
-- Calvin Coolidge