Looking for the Magic of the Season

The fledgling Center for a New American Dream observed its first Christmas this year by taking on Toys R Us.

The 10-month-old center asked the toy giant to “unplug” its gift registries. The computerized program, introduced this year, encourages children to scan their list of preferred holiday toys into a data base tying together the chain’s 683 U.S. stores. Relatives around the country can then consult a computer printout and buy a priority toy.

“It was just too much,” said Betsy Taylor, director of the nonprofit center, whose goal is to encourage nonmaterialistic values in the United States. “It was sending the wrong message to children about values--it was saying that this holiday is about getting as much stuff as you can. Someone checking the stores said that one little girl had a list of 2,200 gifts.”

The toy retail giant has promoted the marketing gimmick as a timesaver. Taylor and her board viewed it as a giant step in the wrong direction.

“We think Christmas should be about family and sharing and fun and giving,” said Taylor. “When we talk about a new American dream with a need for strong values in our society, how can we endorse a toy registry where kids go in and plunk down a laundry list of what they want?”

So the center fired off a letter to the company’s corporate headquarters in Eramus, N.J., ticking off its objections to the registry, including the pressure put on American families to satisfy children’s expanding desire for products.

“Nobody is against gift giving,” said Taylor, the mother of two, “and toys are a nice part of our lives. But toys are not us.”

Although the center has only been operating since March, Taylor thinks the goal--to revamp consumption patterns and restore basic values to our national life--has a growing base of support around the country.

She cites an independent survey, commissioned by her organization earlier this winter, showing that 70% of Americans would welcome less holiday spending and less emphasis on gift giving. More than 50% said they had extended their shopping debt in 1997, with 28% of those saying they were still paying off their 1996 holiday bills as late as October.

The survey, conducted by EDK Associates in New York, also showed that 27% of people in a relationship could not remember the Christmas gift given to them last year by their partner. “That’s an interesting aspect,” said Taylor, “and indicative of the way we tend to get sucked into this mass shopping.”

She and her board members believe that the country is filled with parents who would appreciate support in cutting back on the commercial Christmas pressure. A recent USA Today cover story on the phenomenon of marketing to kids estimated that the typical American child sees 20,000 ads a year and marketers are aware that TV spots targeting kids lead to peer pressure as early as age 3.

“From a personal level, I know it’s hard to combat,” said Taylor. “If you work long hours and don’t have enough time with your children, it’s easy to feel bad and show your love by buying things. I really think lots of people wake up on Dec. 26, feeling a little empty because no deep human connection has happened, the way the ads promised it would.”

Based on the survey and her organization’s feedback, she said, “I think there is a lot of pressure to maintain this commercialism, but a widespread quiet hunger to do it differently.” Indeed, while not yet a national force, the movement to de-commercialize Christmas is lighting up in little bursts around the country.

“It’s a slow-growing process,” said Gerald Iversen, national coordinator for Alternatives for Simple Living in Sioux City, Iowa. “When we began in 1972 we were one of a small handful of organizations working on the addiction of North American over-consumers. Now there are some 200 organizations, both faith-based and secular, working on this problem.”

Betsy Taylor would like her Center for a New American Dream to link the many groups working to restore values into a national force. “We want to help people no matter where they may be, to have a place to go, be part of a local community and get some support,” she said.

Although the center has received no response from Toys R Us, the David versus Goliath aspects of the confrontation have made some ripples in the news. In response to media queries, Toys R Us has said its gift registry makes life easier for busy families who want to make sure children get the toys they really want.

“We think that misses the point,” said Taylor. “It might simplify shopping, but you need to question the whole shopping process. Is this mass consumption really the way we want to celebrate the holidays?”

The Center for a New American Dream, which will shortly move its headquarters from Burlington, Vt., to Washington, D.C., to have a stronger national presence, thinks the issue will keep percolating.

“We find that whenever we speak out, we get a response,” said Taylor. This year the center provided a list of alternative gift-giving ideas, and, by next Christmas, she said, they hope to mobilize a full-scale educational campaign.

“Right now we’re trying to reach people in the homestretch with the shopping frenzy,” she said, “saying ‘Hold on, you don’t have to do it this way.’ ”