I spend more money on Halloween than I do on Christmas. And every year I realize it more and more … I’m spending money on Halloween to share it all with a bunch of strangers and their children rather than on my own family and friends.
I already give lots to my family throughout the year, I don’t need a special holiday to justify those relationships. I used to spend hundreds, even thousands of dollars on decorations, suppers, gifts and doing things for family in or around Christmas and none of it ever made a damned difference. I still love my family but it wasn’t because of Christmas … it was because they are my family. I don’t do any of that any more and you know? I still have the same level of appreciation for my family and they do the same for me … without all the BS of Christmas fanfare.
But on Halloween, I’m giving more to random strangers I don’t even know or will probably never meet again during the year … and all just for the sake of being nice to them.
So now I find that Halloween is a more giving and fun holiday than Christmas. It’s made me realize just how wholesome Halloween is compared to the commercialized hellhole that Christmas has become.
Lunar New Year has joined the chat.
Wait actually nvm, the parents give $100 in a 红包 to your aunt’s kid, then your aunt gives you $100 in a 红包, then you both say thanks.
Then you go home and your parents tell you to give it to them to “safeguard” the money for you; “帮你保管” my mom said, “for college”.
So result:
Money exchanged, money has been moved, but zero actual value has been transfered. They just have a different, fungible, $100.
Gifts: None, except temporarily in possession of $100
But you know, “your mom gave birth to you, you need to 感恩, to be thankful” xD
“世上只有妈妈好” lolol
Thank a lot mom, I love the um… gestures to the air in front of me gift you gave me, very lovely mom 🤗
(okay I kinda exaggerated, I did sometimes get gifts, but not often. it was so rare lol. often its nothing I really wanted… 🥺)
Ugh… Asian Families… It is what it is… I wasn’t even supposed to be born, so I should probably be more thankful to my parents that I even survived past One Child Policy.
The money my wife got was “for college”, then “for marriage”, then “for the grandkids”, and now “for the grandkids’ college”. Life truly is a flat circle.