At Week's End; 311; Materialism at Christmas

Christmas and spending, the two seem inseparable, but has the emphasis on spending gone too far. The commercialization of the holidays are focused at Weeks End, and on Weeks Reviews out of a journalist Fred McCaffrey will be joined by Roger Bimer to discuss what we might expect from the upcoming legislative session. Next at Weeks End. Hello, I'm Neil Boggs at Weeks End.

If your holiday shopping has taken you to the mall or to any large department store, you have undoubtedly witnessed efforts by retailers encouraging shoppers to spend money. The pressure to buy gifts this time of year causes many to spend beyond their means, made easy by credit cards and by other, by now pay later type purchases. Christmas is normally the time of peak sales among local and national merchants. Indeed, retailers rely on the Christmas season to make up a large portion of their profits for the year, but in their efforts to make profit, some feel that retailers and the media have commercialized Christmas out of existence. We live in a materialistic world today, people have forgotten what it is just to have what you need. Christmas to me, it is too materialistic, I think only children on the 15 should get gifts. We're in the middle of a spending make-up and I can't wait to spend. And it's effort that's what's taken a lot of everybody's feelings.

You're pressured to do this and you're pressured to do everything for Christmas that I don't really think that you should have to do. It's just spend, spend, spend, obviously we end up doing that anyway when we go out and we celebrate Christmas, but the idea is to give, because you want to give, and not because you're obligated to, by all the pressures of advertisers. It's just kind of a rat race to meet you know, but a good thing it only comes once a year I guess. I'm just dismayed with it, there's no meaning, there's absolutely no meaning to it. It's gone, it's lost a lot of it's, um, acquaintance and charm. We are joined by Christine Robinson, Minister of Albuquerque's first unitary in church, and by Russell Long, a graduate student of sociology at the University of New Mexico. Thank you for being with us this evening. Mr. Long, my niece tells me of seeing a sweatshirt worn by a Christmas shopper in one of the malls this week that said, get out of my way, Mary Christmas, in just perhaps, but might

there not also be a bitter truth reflected there, from your experience as a sociologist, has Christmas as a joyous time been eclipsed by the commercial aspect and all the stresses that go with that. I don't know if I can speak as a sociologist, I can just speak as a citizen I suppose, but I certainly feel that Christmas for me has become a time where you, where I tend to want to hide in my house as opposed to going out and engaging in the Christmas spirit as such. Reverend Robinson, would you agree with his assessment? I try and stay away from a lot of the commercial aspects of Christmas, too, because I don't want to let that ruin my season. It seems kind of interesting to me that we have all the people in malls deploring what they're doing, and yet nobody forced them there, they're doing it as in their own free will, but not liking it and not enjoying it.

What do you tell your congregation at the first unitary in church about Christmas spending, giving as opposed to spending? Giving presence, you mean? Giving anything. Well, one of the things that I tell my congregation is that giving things that people need, like food for the hungry and things like that, is one of the ways to take back the Christmas spirit away from the commercialism and that our willingness to give and our willingness to connect ourselves with others, not just our own immediate family, is one of the things that puts the pleasure back in Christmas. Which along, Reverend Robinson mentioned food for the hungry among things that we should be thinking about, giving for Christmas, there is an abundance of people in need out there, and they're presumably in need all year round, but we seem to only hear of them around Christmas time. Do we save our consciences by giving a few dollars then? Oh, I think we do. I would like to pick up on a point that she made in terms of being forced, and in fact, at some level, perhaps we are forced to take part in this activity.

Christmas is such an important time in our culture that if you do ostracize yourself, you remove yourself from a great deal of social activity that's important to Americans at large, so in fact, perhaps we are forced to take part in this. Well, it's easy, Reverend Robinson, to put the blame on the cellar with all of the advertising, the hype, this is what's expected of you type approach, and so forth. But how much responsibility does rest with those of us who are out there buying? Well, I think another thing that is important to remember about Christmas and the commercialization of Christmas, that the things that we do, the lights and the gifts and the special foods and the sort of hyped up atmosphere, that goes back as far in human history as we can imagine, that there's something very deep within our souls that responds to the darkest time of the year by celebrating, and my guess is that the cavemen actually spent more of their available resources on their solstice holiday than we spend on Christmas.

And we have just reached the point of year where we had the longest, darkest night of the year. That's right, and so all those little lights we buy and the special cookies we make and the gifts and so on, that's etched deep in our souls. So it goes beyond the Christian celebration of Christmas itself. Now has the gift itself become the focus rather than the thought behind giving that gift Mr. Long? Certainly. If you don't, if you're given a gift and you don't reciprocate, I think in some circles that might be seen as a social blunder of sorts, at least in your own mind, you've got to reciprocate. Let's explore another aspect here now, I'll be the devil's advocate for the moment. Christmas means jobs, Christmas means sales, Christmas means profits, a wide range of the populace is touched positively, supposedly, by the spending bans that so many of us engage in. Do you have anything to say about that? I can only imagine that it would be better for our economy if all this was spread out.

If we celebrated birthdays and Valentine's Day, 4th of July with a little bit more fervor and a little less on Christmas, my guess is that everybody would be a little bit better off. And of course, the same thing for the giving that boy, it's important to go singing love songs at nursing homes at Valentine's Day is even more important than Carol's at Christmas in some ways because we forget about the folks who need us at other times of the year. Does all of this say something you must are long about the present state of American values or how we interpret those values now? We're accused of being a more society, no matter how much we have, we want more. Do you think that's an accurate characterization? Certainly, but it's programmed into us, we've been a consumer society for a good hundred years or perhaps more. And we're just following through with the dictates of the larger economy. If we don't go out and spend, you're right, people will not have jobs and the economy comes crashing to a halt at some point.

Well, is there a guilt factor in here somewhere? If we don't give, we feel that we're not worthy of the friendship or the love that somebody else has for. Do you see that as being a component at all? Yeah. I do. And in spite of the fact that none of us believe that. We all believe that love and affection and esteem and all those things are much more important than anything that can be bought. And yet, we go out and buy anyway. Love affection and esteem, though, does that justify people going at the hawk to buy things that they can't afford on the premise that, well, perhaps I can afford it by the time the bill comes in January, February, Mr. Long from the standpoint of sociology. How does it come into play? Are we buying out of guilt quite often? We're not worthy of someone's love if we don't display it in dollars or ostentatiously in some way. I don't know when I go to the malls around Christmas time, I don't do it out of a sense of guilt, perhaps it's more of a sense of habit, not yourself necessarily, but other people

that you talk with and see are they motivated by guilt? The people that we saw on the tape clip at the beginning of the program, they're decrying what they're doing, but yet they're there. Why do you think they're there? I don't think they're there because they're guilty, maybe we can call it the limine effect, that we all do this and therefore we should do it. I didn't detect guilt in there, it was more a thing that we do without much forethought. Christmas isn't the only time we spend without noticing it's effect and we're all, most of us are debtors in one way or another. We overspend it all times of the year. The quality, let's talk about that for a moment, the effect on the environment as a consuming nation now, the vast amounts of materials that get thrown away or break down. We're certainly reaching a point where we're causing tremendous damage to our environment by consuming across the board, not just at Christmas time. Christmas time exaggerates this tendency, but we consume much more than we need to every

day of the year. You see it having a strong negative effect, the overbuying, the overspending. Certainly our overconsuming is having a terrible effect on our world and it'll be interesting to see what we will replace. Once we discover we can't do that anymore, what we will replace that consumerism with. At the beginning of the program we heard someone say that presents should be bought only for people 15 and younger. A recent special edition of Newsweek that you may have seen Reverend Robinson described quote, teenagers hooked on premature affluence. Do you think they in turn are being conditioned to become big spenders and big borrowers? Well, I think children and teenagers, especially young children, are so affected by the Madison Avenue and by the difficulty that children that age have in determining what's real and what's made up.

When we expose them to that kind of thing, we mold their minds and mold their values and that worries me. We can see that being played out every Saturday morning during the cartoon times. It's the tremendous rush of consumerism for children at that point. And youngsters has been shown who are very vulnerable to the type of advertising pitch that's made to them at that point. It's created for them. Thank you very much. Reverend Robinson, for your views on this and for you, Mr. Long, for joining us. Coming up next is Weeks Review with Journalist Fred McCaffrey. Welcome to Weeks Review, our regular moderator, Roger Morris, even as we speak as enjoying

himself on the island of Kurosawa. He and his wife are resting from the labors they put into the completion of the first of the three volumes they are writing under the title of Richard Millhouse Nixon. I've invited, as a guest this evening, to talk about the coming legislative session, a man that I'm sure most adult New Mexicans remember very well. Roger Bimer, who was for a decade and a half, a political commentator on commercial television stations in Albuquerque. Thanks, Fred. I think you said that the first legislative session you covered was the first one in the roundhouse, the Capitol Building we occupy. That's right. I was going to the University of New Mexico as a matter of fact when I started working at the TV station and fell into the role of covering the first session of the legislature in the roundhouse.

I think one day I had it up, I've spent something like two and a half years of my life going in circles with that building, either in my former role as a reporter in my present role as a lobbyist. It will be interesting to see what the changes in the building, how they change the way the whole system works. You'll still be going in circles, I assume, but maybe not as many. Presume we will. We're coming up on a 1990 session and that's one of those even numbered years in which our legislature always does odd things. Would you care to rise to that bait? No. You better. This session is one of those 30-day sessions that is to take up those issues that the governor has vetoed or issues of fiscal or financial matter that can come before the state legislature or any other semblance of legislation that can improve on its face to be German subject to be discussed by legislative committees who decide, yes, this legislation proposed

by this person is German and we should discuss it during our tenure at this particular session. When we're going into the session without a lot of money, at least, the people who project it say we're going to have a little more next year but it won't make much difference. Projections are difficult needless to say. You and I can project one thing today and day after tomorrow someone will project something else but I think generally speaking, everyone realizes times are going to be tight for state government. You wouldn't have thought that if you listened to the agency heads appearing before the legislative finance committee when they were making their requests. They were averaging 6, 10, 12 percent more next year. Well, there has to be some room for negotiation in there and they obviously want to ask for a big piece of pie and hopes that by the time the cutting is done, there'll be some left they can do their job with and it's not uncommon to have someone ask for the

sky and hope you can get 160 acres. We have this complex budget thing procedure. I don't know if people really understand, you know, we go through all of this preparation of a budget by the legislative finance committee and they've got that ready when the session starts. The governor meanwhile is out preparing a budget of his own, you know, the one that comes from the Department of Finance at administration and those two meet and present their budgets before the lawmakers. And in the career others years, the governor has pretty much said to his agency heads, well, you know, put in any bills you want and ask for anything you want anyway. So you got almost like three sets of proposals knocking around. The financial booklets are amazing in themselves. They come at two or three or four inches thick, some of which do nothing more than take up space on a shelf and some people's offices. Of which pages are torn out of and marked up as time goes by various legislative committee

upon legislative committee. The legislators of course put a great deal of faith in the budget that is proposed by their people, the legislative finance committee and the administration heads are going to look at the budget that is proposed by their administrations and their departments and say this is the better. And then the lawmakers sit there and back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, switching their political allegiances as they see fit. At the end, something always happens there in the last three or four days. What usually happens in the last three or four days is the budget that comes out of the house doesn't have to under New Mexico law, but traditionally it does. Come out of the house. Get past somehow in the house. It goes over to the Senate. The Senate usually fails to concur, that is to say they want to make some major changes in it. And it goes to a conference committee. And when it's in a conference committee, it's behind closed doors.

And that's where it's possible to up and down and back and forth till they get a bill that can be passed by both houses. The legislative work is interesting in itself because you have a house appropriations and finance committee. It sits there and looks at the appropriations and finance of state government and they will pass their bill and the house will then pass the bill as amended as they see fit. It then goes to the Senate finance committee and those folks have their own idea about how spending of state money should be accomplished. And then that goes to the Senate and then you end up with the committee of six or eight or twelve people that then go behind doors and dole out what state money is necessary. And then, of course, the legislature actually gets a yes or a no vote on that conference committee report. There's no amending it. That's all. After that happens. And that's usually in the last hours, if not minutes, of the legislative sessions. And it's that way year after year after year, which means it's not just an accident. That's the way the legislators find most advisable to operate it.

And it doesn't matter if it's a 30-day session or a 60-day session. Those last two or three hours are the ones where all the stuff comes flowing out and the final decisions are made. So tell me now that you're going to be lobbying this session and possibly whispering in people's ear or doing those devious things that people think lobbyists do. What do you think is going to be a big crash, the train wreck of 1990? Oh, I don't. It's going to have to be money for it. There is no money. I've visited in the last three or four days with some leadership in both the House and the Senate. And they all agree that the money is going to be the deal, but it's always the issue at the end. There are emotional issues that come up that get headlines, but it all gets down to state government and state dollars and state monies. And to the person I talked to, the legislature has no way out, but to look for more money. And of course, more money.

Go ahead. Say the word. You want to enhance it if you say it in Washington now, but you and I call it taxes. Somehow. Somehow. Somewhere there has to be more money. Do you think there is any likelihood at all that we could come out of the session without new taxes or increased taxes? I don't. To maintain the existing services, I think we're going to have to look at it. So to simply to stand still, we're going to almost going to have to do that because things like Medicaid, other things of that sort, eat up more money every year, keeping prisons operating. And the corrections is going to be a major issue. The governor is just going to make it a major issue. He's already suggested some bills he's going to put in. I mean he's told us what they're going to be. And not to dwell forever on the financial end but you know there there were rebates at one time and then we canceled rebates to bring in money and and things like that where there have been the money has continued to come and we've canceled one thing or another we haven't the legislature hasn't. Now there's no place to go but to add something to the bottom line. One of the most interesting ones to me is in the last year when we were all joyous because we said we had a 22

million dollar windfall. One of the big oil companies had paid this big tax and everybody was very happy to announce that we had this great some we hadn't expected and then we discovered that maybe somebody at this big company had got the decimal point in the wrong place. We had to give 20 million of it back. Well somehow we never get that on the front page of the papers when we have to get it back but windfalls we always do. And the front pages will be interesting during the next 30 days legislative session because there are a number of people in the legislature who are running for offices other than state Senate looking to go on to higher places and of course all the members of the House of Representatives are going to be running for reelection. All up they may not all run. The senators do not run this year as senators but some of them are going for higher offices of one kind or another and and people are making these suggestions. Dick Minster held a news conference this week and he

more or less suggested that we mortgage our future. I mean he said let's issue bonds to build our highways that's a nice word for borrowing money to build the highways. Let's take the money from the highway fund and put it into the general fund and then of course as Paul Bartike had previously suggested we tap that severance tax money that comes in that they lost after that you know. There will be lots of saber rattling and and the discussions on the floors and in the hallways and in the news conference rooms of the state legislature as those pronouncements come forth about great solutions to great problems and there may be one that happens. Maybe one will work or we will boil them all down into some small nubbin of what the big totals suggest and I think that's what we're going to do with things like raises you know we had this

consultant who came in and said why we ought to give all the state employees what virtually came to a raise of a half million dollars a week you know and in the aggregate and remember when we give those kind of raises those are not one time that's not a one-time expenditure that goes in to the recurring expense for all future years. It's not a one-time only Christmas bonus. No no no and Governor Carruthers said well you're not supposed to ask questions until you know what the answer is and maybe in that case we should have gotten the guy's answer before we announced it. I think there's a feeling amongst a lot of legislators at state government employees which includes teachers. Yeah need to see some more funds. Yeah I do too and I sincerely think they will make effort to do that. I don't think there's any cold-blooded feeling. I noticed that one of the senators who serves on the legislative finance committee came out and blabbed which is something that isn't looked upon to highly in

Santa Fe and he said well they're going to suggest that there be no raises for anybody but if they do suggest that that will be a ploy as they prepare to play the chess game that has to be played. I think there's there has to be money in there are some plays for employees. State employees I would think. Yeah prices go up and state employees need more money and and there's no question anybody's mind that the state employees especially at the lower level find it hard making it on the money they make and then they need and deserve money and we always talk about teachers needing and deserving more money so. There will also be I think Fred a good deal of talk about ethics and government and ethics of elected representatives of our people and those people who are elected to represent us at various places. Including included in that probably some things having to do with stiffening drunken driving laws and so on. I say included in that because I think the misfortunes of some of the legislators have

helped to bring that forward and give it a little more urgency. I think we will see a change in our DWI law in New Mexico and not only because I most states I think are stiffening up there. Not only what's happened in New Mexico it's it's it's the whole drug thing across the country. We'll see a stiffer drunk driving law and we'll see stiffer penalties for those that get convicted. It's just it's the moral things to do I suppose. Do you see any things in the field in which you find yourself that is that will affect our utilities or things of that kind. Things are rather quiet on the utility fund. You'd like to keep it that way. I work with the electric cooperatives the little people of the electric utility business and I think what has happened to the utility here in Albuquerque has backed off a few folks and I think that they some people are feeling sorry for the public service company in New Mexico. And I don't think there is a burning issue out there affecting the utilities in this state. There are a number of

them that operate here and I the interim committee meetings of which there are multitudes of the throughout the year. There has been a little indicate that there is dissatisfaction out there with the way things are. So it's going to be a relatively simple year. We're going to talk about income and I'll go try to make a balance and then hopefully we will all smile at one another and go peacefully home until 1991. As appropriate this time of year. Thank you Roger for being here. Pleasure. If you wish to express your views about our program please write us at Weeksend K-N-M-E-T-V 1130 University Boulevard Northeast Albuquerque, New Mexico 8-7-102. Next week some reflections on the year now ending. How did it go? Are we as New Mexicans better or worse off as we close out 1989? And how much unfinished business is being carried over into the new

decade 1990 will bring? I hope you'll join us. From all of us happy holidays. I'm Neil Boggs at Weeksend. Television Workshop 321 Contact Box TG 1 Lincoln Plaza, New York,

102-3. This is PBS.