My daughter returned from a birthday party this past weekend carrying a bag monogrammed with the party girl’s name, and inside it, a pair of pajama shorts, pajama pants, sweatpants, two T-shirts, one zip-up sweatshirt, two pairs of sunglasses, and a fancy makeup blush, all emblazoned with the girl’s name and the theme of the party. And then on top of the stuff, a whole bunch of candy. I was confused and asked if this was the normal amount of “swag” everyone got or if my daughter had won some special contest to get that much stuff. Apparently, everyone got this much, and according to my daughter, some people also got Stanley water bottles, but sadly, she wasn’t one of the lucky ones.
I was speechless when I watched her unpack her new bag and excitedly show me everything she’d gotten. I felt sick to my stomach, as if I’d had the wind knocked out of me. Oddly, I didn’t feel angry or outraged (which I would have expected), but rather I was overcome by a sense of despair and the aroma of wordless confusion.
Later, I called a friend who also has a child in the thick of early teenhood and attends many of these parties. My mom friend recounted a conversation with her son when she’d asked why he was getting so much stuff at these parties. His comment at the time was “Why else would I or anyone else go?” The idea that anyone would go just to spend time with friends, have fun, celebrate the person whose birthday it is, enjoy good food, dance, listen to music, or any other experience the event included was preposterous. What mattered was getting stuff, pure and simple; the more the better.
As a writer, it’s hard to render me speechless, but this whole topic for some reason takes my breath away and with it my words. The only thing I seem to be able to utter is, “What’s wrong with us?” and “Where did we take a profoundly wrong turn in the path of human evolution?”
I’ve heard a lot of great quotes over the years, but one of the best I’ve heard, and one of my favorites, is Warren Zevon’s response to David Letterman when asked what he’d learned about life and death after his terminal cancer diagnosis. In describing what’s important in a good life, Zevon said: “Enjoy every sandwich.” I never forgot that line, and it popped into my consciousness when my daughter was pulling out items from what seemed like a bottomless bag from the party. I wondered how our children could ever enjoy anything, much less something as mundane as a sandwich, when they are constantly being buried in stuff.
The amount of stuff children receive in this glut culture is startling and disturbing, regardless of where one sits in the economic ecosystem. This tsunami of things we’re drowning our kids in creates an environment in which nothing has value, nothing is worth paying attention to, nothing is worth appreciating, and nothing is deserving of gratitude. All that matters is the acquisition of things, but not the enjoyment of them. This is further evidenced by the fact (as I am told by many parents) that this “swag” often stays in the bag, dropped somewhere in their kids’ rooms, never noticed much less enjoyed again. All of it, made using resources from our earth, will then disappear into the giant vat of disposable things that ends up back in the earth; all of it used only for the purposes of determining whether a party was “good” and the child whose parents bought the stuff is deserving of popularity.
I wonder, is there no other way for us to celebrate transitions in life and celebrate people other than with things? Must we send our children home from every experience with a product to mark and brand the event? Have we forgotten how to taste our experiences, how to feel and retain meaning in our lives? Do we need all the stuff to prove that something valuable or important is happening because we’ve forgotten how to make our lives feel meaningful and real, and how to feel gratitude for the moment…without all the products?
But most importantly, what can we do as parents to change this glut culture? How can we wake up from under all the stuff and show our kids how to appreciate, derive meaning from, and ultimately, experience a good life? How can we invite our kids and ourselves to be able to enjoy a sandwich?
People often claim this issue is too big to tackle and that there’s no point in trying to make things different; “they,” the machine, have won. But this is never true; we can always start with ourselves and our family. We can do it differently in our own homes and with our own kids. We can take control of what we can control. That said, we can decide to mark the spiritual moments in our children’s lives in ways other than with “swag.” We can intentionally teach our children countless reasons to go to a celebration—reasons that are not about getting more stuff they don’t need or even want. We can reinforce and support alternative ways of deriving meaning from events that will nourish, sustain, and fulfill them for more than just a minute. We don’t have to follow and encourage this damaging trend of excess just because it’s the way it’s done.
It’s hard to be a change-maker, to buck the trends, but ultimately we are doing something profoundly good for all of our children, and all our adults too, in the long run…even though they may not agree right now. It’s hard to go it alone as we put our kid at risk for social suicide, being the one who didn’t give the kids what they’ve been taught to want, and being judged as an unworthy party-giver.
Because of this, we need to talk to other parents and form an alliance. We need to agree to a sea change in the way parties are marked and branded. Think about it as starting a movement in the community, one pair of pajama pants at a time. Parents and kids will balk, perhaps because it’s easier to throw sunglasses at a problem than to address the problem. But if we can keep our eye on our intention—to teach our kids how to appreciate milestones, their friends, and ultimately, their lives; to teach our kids how to feel gratitude and a sense of enough-ness for what they do have; to teach our kids nothing short of how to be content and live a satisfying life—then we can keep going and keep bringing light into the very cluttered darkness.
