This season is about too much. We eat too much food, we buy too many things... we stuff ourselves and we stuff our houses. When you study a philosophy that teaches you to that "enough" is better than "too much" you begin to see this.
First there's the food. We love each other and we make special foods to give pleasure to each other, and these foods make us fat and lethargic. I don't see many people giving out vegetable trays. It's all candy and cookies.
Then you have the sales. People crowd into stores. People drive aggressively to get there.
And everything is pumpkin flavored.
And what should people get you, if you're a middle class Stoic? You already have it all. You don't want anything else. You don't want half of what you already have.
This is a unique sensation, not wanting anything.
This year I told my kids that they would go through their toys and get rid of whatever they didn't play with anymore to make room for the new toys. I was surprised by how attached they were to things that they hadn't touched in eight months.
"But you haven't seen this since last year..."
"But Daddy, I LOVE this!"
I wasn't cruel about it; we reasoned through the process of letting their things go, and if they really wanted to keep something they did. And they were willing to part with a garbage bag full of things.
When we were done, they said they liked it. The room was cleaner. That's a start.
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Public domain image courtesy of the New York Public Library
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