Chattanooga Pulse

Next week marks the start of the busiest retail season of the year—Christmas…and Hanukah. For it is these precious annual holidays during which we bestow our friends and family with the gifts we think they’ll like in exchange for stuff that we hope we’ll like.

Personally, I don’t know why we bother. I know, I know, “giving” is part of the spirit of the season. But why should I have to spend money buying a bunch of stuff for other people that I wouldn’t have bought for myself in hopes that they can read my mind and buy the very thing I would have bought for myself (“That’s just what I wanted—thanks!”)?

Then you realize that what they bought you—which you didn’t really need or want because no one knows what you want or need any better than yourself—cost about a third of what you spent on them. What? So I spent more money on something I didn’t want and gave to someone else than something I really wanted but didn’t get. Bah humbug.

Again, why do we bother? We live in one of the richest more »