It’s that time of year again, Charlie Brown. It’s the time when stores and TV specials announce the upcoming Christmas season, if they missed the first round back in October. Yes, the overcommercialization of the holiday season is back in business this year, much to the Peanuts’ lament.

One likes to believe in the freedom of the season. It’s a time filled with friends and family and goodwill toward everyone else. It’s also filled with stuff — lots of it. Before and after a record Black Friday, companies have dumped on the market Christmas supplies, trinkets and the most disgraceful assortment of deplorable rubbish imaginable, mangled up in tangled-up aisles. It seems like there is hardly any freedom from the tyranny of the shopping mall and its flat-screen TVs at ridiculously low prices.  

Maybe I’m being a bit harsh. After all, where else would we get our gifts or the things that enable us to celebrate Christmas? Before “A Charlie Brown Christmas” first aired, aluminum Christmas trees were a growing trend. The harkening back to a simpler, seemingly less commercial celebration was answered by none other than the free market itself.

All of this machinery making modern Yuletide can still be open-hearted. Even with the echoes of salesmen, there’s still a place for the true meaning of the season. Some businesses have misplaced the true reason long before Charlie Brown first appeared and are unlikely to have their hearts grow three sizes in any one season, much less in a single day. However, there is a place where peace and goodwill toward others can thrive: our hearts. As cheesy and sickening as that sounds, it’s true.

Where else can the love of others be so uncorrupted? To sow a new mentality of what Christmas means, beyond the packages, boxes and bags, each must know his part. This means individuals living out peace on earth, especially when society at large fails to do so. To restore the Christmas Charlie Brown laments was lost, each person must go back to look at the cause and implications of the holiday.

There are many people who celebrate Christmas religiously, and there are others who do not. But found in every charitable and giving heart is a religion of love.

Here is where the true reason has lived always. Whether companies oversell this time of year does not change anything about the holiday. Live and let humbug.

How do we play up this aspect of the holiday to a volume louder than the commercials and bigger than the billboards? We should know that we are responsible for controlling the holiday spirit, not companies. When we discover for ourselves the power of our kindness and benevolence, other people will follow suit. When the public — when individuals — accepts its call to act on behalf of its downtrodden, then Wall Street will follow.

The men who hold high places in retail don’t have to be the ones who start celebrating Christmas. The giver and the volunteer reflect it in their art. Through generosity and kindness seen in the much-publicized NYPD officer giving a pair of shoes to a homeless man and the nation’s overwhelming response to natural disasters like Superstorm Sandy, everyday people are making a difference in this world.

We as American people have a good history when coming together in times of crisis or great need. Everywhere there is poverty or someone who has given up, there is a great need. Now in the season set aside for giving we are reminded of the need for generosity on a daily basis. When individuals decide to live the Christmas spirit all year round, only then can a new reality of the holiday season be forged closer to the heart.

Dylan is a freshman in Business. He can be reached at [email protected]