Dollar Store Christmas

I am just back from a trip to 'The Dollar Store' (or 'Dollar Tree' in some places) to buy Christmas gift bags, boxes and tissue for covering the gifts. Every American knows when it is time for purchasing Christmas supplies at a fraction of the cost of other retail stores, the Dollar Tree can not be beat. Often the identical items sold in Dollar Tree Stores are found at expensive retail stores, at much higher prices. But the economic model of the Dollar Tree stores is mass purchase of those supplies from Asian factories (often western owned) that produce the items at low cost, given the low costs of labor where the merchandise is manufactured. Maybe God is Asian?

As I strolled inside the store and saw every imaginable item that could be sold for a single dollar, I thought how miraculous was  the economy of scale and the influence of the computer chip (so many sound, color and motion objects for a dollar) at that store. At Christmas, The Dollar Store becomes the stereotype of a commercialized Christmas experience. And customers love it. Why not purchase the Christmas ornament that plays "We Wish You Merry Christmas" when a person's motion or light change activates the recording? Where else can we buy Christmas wrapping, stockings, gadgets and every Christmas decoration imaginable, for a single dollar?

Christmas at the Dollar Store is almost entirely a secular one. When one walks among the endless line of Christmas related dollar treats he or she finds little or nothing related to actual Christmas, you know....the religious thing. At the Dollar Store Jesus is secular, not the Jesus Christ the holiday is supposed to honor. You'll find no direct mention of Christ at the Dollar Store, but a multitude of objects to buy that worship commercial, secular "Christmas". This in itself is neither good nor bad in my view. As long as humans are celebrating a good cause, it matters no whether it is tied to religion. Still, one can learn a lot about a society, even it's religious orientation, by surveying the Dollar Store when a religious holiday is on going.

This season I bought the parchment paper used to back Christmas cookies, peppermint sticks, the wrapping paper and gift bags I mentioned above, a wind up walking Santa and walking penguin, batteries for the toys that are gifts, Christmas tins as the receptacle for the cookies, ornaments for the tiny live tree that rests on my kitchen counter, and more.  Hmmm no  Jesus icons in that lot. I realize none of those purchases are necessary, that I am a part of commercialized Christmas. It is said that we Americans buy too much "junk". It is true, but I suspect every nation, every culture, buys its own version of "too much junk". Ours sings Christmas carols, lights up and uplifts our spirits during the holidays. It's ot so bad in that it distracts us from real world problems and heartbreaks.

Oh my! I just realized I forgot to buy that Christmas tic tac toe game and the Christmas jiz saw puzzle while at the Dollar Tree. I can't get through the holidays without that. I better go back to the Dollar Store and buy it now!