Reva Brock Ellis is with family and friends today. She arrived at their homes with no presents. She’s giving the gift of food.
“I asked them what they wanted me to cook,” she said when asked what she was giving as holiday gifts.
This isn’t out of the ordinary. Ellis, who is from Greenwood but lives in Lexington, said she’s always given her cooking as a gift. What’s different, though, is that most people she knows are following suit.
“We talked about it, and all the adults are just enjoying each other’s company and cooking for Christmas,” she said. “We’re leaving the gifts for the kids.”
A paper-thin economy forced some people to overhaul their approach to Christmas this year. The traditional Scotch tape, wrapping paper and receipts have been shuffled aside — replaced, as Ellis said, with “family, love and the birth of Christ.”
“That’s OK,” she said, “because those things are what Christmas is about.”
Another Greenwood native, Kimberly Johnson, has noticed a change in people’s moods. But instead of the circumstances reining the Christmas spirit in, Johnson thinks, for some people, it’s let the spirit out.
“It seems like people are a lot more focused on togetherness, on helping other people,” Johnson said. “There’s a lot more real cheer out there if you ask me.
“I think it’s because it’s not just one person struggling; it’s everyone together. That’s what we need, a little more unity. Actually, that’s what we need a lot more of.”
Jamie Hooks could feel the purse strings tightening and made adjustments for the holidays. When it came to roaming stores in the weeks leading up to today, Hooks said she forced herself to stick to her budget.
“When the money I had put aside for Christmas was gone, that was it,” Hooks said.
Still, the Black Hawk resident wasn’t sure other Greenwood-area shoppers had fully grasped how precious a little saved money can be, especially with the economy in a straitjacket from the 1930s.
“I don’t think it’s hit everybody. Everybody’s still spending money like crazy,” she said Tuesday afternoon. “If you don’t believe it, just go look at Wal-Mart’s parking lot.”
While locals cherry-picked gifts from stores’ aisles up until the last minute, Mary Nell Hale said the materialistic mood that has taken over Christmas leaves her numb.
“I guess people are going to tell me, ‘Bah, humbug,’” said a smiling Hale. She said her favorite part of Christmas is getting to see her four grandchildren. “People need to get back to the basic meaning of Christmas, what it was meant to be.”
Ellis agrees. She also believes the country’s current state could help nudge Christmas celebrations back to where they should be.
“This is God’s way of telling us what should be on our mind during the holidays,” she said. “Sometimes it takes a fall for people to realize how far away we’ve really gotten from the true meaning.”
