Today Newspaper St. Maarten

Letter: Avoid black Christmas

Dear Editor,

Have you heard about black Friday in the US where shoppers go crazy shopping for so called sales to the extent of wanting to shoot each other? This is a perfect example of greed, where the poor, not the rich people, kill themselves buying things that they do not need. I bet you never knew that the poor are the real greedy people.

Poor people tend to have the mentality that we do not have enough and let us grab as much as we can. In the process of buying and grabbing all they can get, the rich become richer because the poor are buying from the rich. Earlier in the year I heard a multi-millionaire give me advice to invest in stocks late October and sell early April. His reasoning was, that prices of stocks always go up during November and December holidays when people go crazy shopping. Rich people own the big businesses and when sales go up their businesses make money and the value of the companies go up, thus stock prices go up.

        In St. Maarten we do not have a black Friday as such, but we do have a black Christmas, where people go crazy shopping just because it is Christmas. It is the time of the year when the poor become poorer because of greed and the rich become richer because of wisdom. They invest instead of spending like crazy.

      It is sad that even some “born again Christians” are sucked up into this frenzy. The Bible never instructed us to celebrate Christmas, yet we spend most of God’s money, time and other resources on this greed fueled holiday. The things we do and the sins we commit out of tradition and not out of Godly revelation! Do not expect a great many spiritual leaders to teach us to stop this sin, because for the greedy shepherds it might mean the loss of sheep and offering money.

People, 90 plus percent of the population are becoming poorer by the day. Let us sober up this Christmas and think before we buy things we really do not need.

I am a promoter of a greed-free Christmas.

Patricia Varlack