{"id":7892,"date":"2010-11-28T23:32:49","date_gmt":"2010-11-29T07:32:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/?p=7892"},"modified":"2010-11-28T23:35:16","modified_gmt":"2010-11-29T07:35:16","slug":"bah-humbug","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/?p=7892","title":{"rendered":"Bah, humbug"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&#8216;Tis the season to hate Christmas, and your pal Mr. Crankypants is right out there in front of the crowd of Christmas-haters. The two different stories you can read in Matthew and Luke are just fine (though it does irk Mr. C. that Christmas-lovers continually get <a href=\"http:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/story45.htm\">their angels mixed up with their magi, and their basic Christmas holiday mixed up with their Epiphany holiday<\/a>). The consumerist Christmas, on the other hand, has no redeeming value, unless you&#8217;re a retailer with a heart of black ink.<\/p>\n<p>Into the Christmas consumerist fray steps a brave economist, Professor Joel Waldfogel of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. In his book <a href=\"http:\/\/www.scroogenomics.com\/\"><em>Scroogenomics: Why You Shouldn&#8217;t Give Presents for the Holidays<\/em><\/a>, Waldfogel &#8220;looks at decades of retail spending data to make the case that buying gifts destroys wealth and happiness &#8212; and in many cases it would be better to not buy presents for the holidays at all. So put down that credit card and think before you use money you don&#8217;t have to buy things that recipients don&#8217;t really want.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Now, repeat after Mr. Crankypants: &#8220;Bah! humbug! Christmas humbug!&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><em><small>Thanks to Carol for the tip!<\/small><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8216;Tis the season to hate Christmas, and your pal Mr. Crankypants is right out there in front of the crowd of Christmas-haters. The two different stories you can read in Matthew and Luke are just fine (though it does irk Mr. C. that Christmas-lovers continually get their angels mixed up with their magi, and their [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46,47],"tags":[299],"class_list":["post-7892","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-culture","category-pop-culture","tag-christmas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7892","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7892"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7892\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7897,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7892\/revisions\/7897"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7892"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7892"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7892"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}