Grouchy ex reality TV star Kate Gosselin is not anything like the Grinch when it comes time to celebrate Christmas. Actually, she loves the gifts, the getting, the gluttony, and the wastefulness of mass consumption! Rather than going green and recycling, reducing, re-using, or repurposing gifts or gift wrap, she wads everything up she does not want and tips the garbage collectors in Christmas cookies to haul it off to the land fill.
What a great message she is NOT sending her kids! Former reality television star turned coupon blogger Kate Gosselin is coming under fire by fans for flaunting the excessive trash she and her children generate at Christmas time. It seems the Gosselins are striving to create enough waste in their family home to have their own private landfill. Why is she so (for lack of a better work) insensitive about her responsibility to other people, the planet, and the world around her? Because reading her blog posts, it seems like she’s greedy — a celebrity mom acting more like the Mayor of Whoville in Ron Howard‘s production of How The Grinch Stole Christmas. You know… the once starring actors Jim Carrey, Jeffrey Tanbor, and actresses Taylor Momsen and Christina Barinski?
“When it comes to telling a Christmas story, former reality television star Kate Gosselin sounds more like the Whoville mayor than the Grinch. In a new blog post titled Decking the Halls with the Gosselins posted December 12th, 2011, the celebrity mom shared her secret formula for surviving the Holidays with 8 kids: feed them sugar and buy them gifts…” shared Gather news.
Please don’t shoot the messenger — Kate really bragged to fans about how much of a mess her eight kids made while opening so many gifts before she feeds them hot chocolate and sweet roll for Christmas breakfast. What valuable message is she not teaching her kids? That the real healthy message of Christmas should be a charitable one — to reduce, re-use, and re-purpose for the sake of both yourselves and other people on the planet.
KATE GOSSELIN MORE LIKE WHOVILLE MAYOR THAN THE GRINCH
The Ron Howard’s rendition of The Grinch Who Stole Christmas was a brilliant interpretation of the Dr. Suess classic tale of a big green monster who loathed the mass consumption of the Who people (folks who seemed obsessed with buying and using goods in gluttonous amounts over the holiday season).
Jim Carrey nemesis’ (the Whoville mayor) was played by actor Jeffrey Tambor. In the Christmas movie, he would go to any length to impress Martha May Whovier, played by actress Christina Baranski. While Kate Gosselin might not have a suitor in mind that she’s trying to impress by claiming her home life around the holidays promotes greed, wasteful abundance, and careless use of material resources, she seems to be impressed by all the Christmas flash.
During a time in American history when so many families are going without, Kate Gosselin saying, “Following our mass gift opening, I know that once again this year I’ll sit on the floor for 4+ hours unpacking toys and installing batteries. I am not exaggerating! My ‘hiney‘ is sore by the time the last toy has been freed from its packaging prison…” shows she is not really in touch with her Reality Television Viewers Coupon Blog Readers everyday reality.
When she goes on to share, “That is the biggest dread of Christmas with 8 kids… and the trash that fills the entire entryway of our house. For this reason, on post-Christmas trash day, I always place containers of baked goods out by the trashcans for our ever kind and helpful trash men…” no one seems to be impressed by her ethics.
As a parent who strives to raise eco-friendly and socially conscious kids myself, we’ve done things over the years like use the same gift boxes, bows, and bags over the years to eliminate waste from gift wrap. We’ve bought less and given back to the community more — including re-gifting among family members, donating food, clothing, toys, and household goods to the needy, and have prided ourselves on contributing less junk and clutter to land fills by recycling, re-purposing, and re-using.
While Kate Gosselin seems proud of all she and her children waste — because they are THANKFUL that they are allowed to waste it — she puts a shudder down the spine of any mother or father who are trying to raise kids who are both in touch with the world around them and are not gluttons.
One reader on Gather summed up Kate Gosselin’s holiday blog post the best, saying:
Kate has no self awareness at all. She comes across sounding like a very over indulgent ‘mommy’. At the same time writing this horrible article, she was asked, again, for her address for a fan to send a ‘box’ for them for Christmas. She couldn’t answer this fan fast enough~ “email me at my website and I will give it to you”. I have never seen a so-called celebrity accept presents/gifts or anything at all from fans. All I have EVER seen when one was even asked, to ‘donate’ to such and such a charity or your own choice. This woman this writes this article about ALL the presents that her kids get. She is just plain greedy. A few of her fans have tweeted over the months that they have had to ‘downsize’ because they lost jobs etc. Or couldn’t even buy clothes for their kids. Yet, this ‘so broke, so scared’ mommy who lost her job, now brags about her over indulgence of gifts to these kids. Oh yeah, and her family is the ONLY one who gets SO excited. Her family is the only one who shrieks and yells and are SO thankful. No one else has this sort of happy, happy joy joy holiday. Her kids are the most thankful in the world. This woman should be ashamed of herself. Truly ashamed. She has been blessed with so much and she is still taking, taking and taking. Shame on this greedy, bragging woman/child.
Even the Grinch himself got better press before his heart grew three sizes back. Why? Because when the people of Whoville were busy consuming, he was busy sorting through their garbage. His mission in life was to turn their trash into treasures by re-using, recycling, and re-purposing clothing, toys, and home goods.
If Kate Gosselin grew a heart, turned green like Mr. Grinch, and really thought about the callous nature of the remarks in her post, she might change her holiday traditions to include doing far more of value with her kids by using less. She might also think about giving her garbage collectors real money to help their families through this economic crisis rather than acting like Scrooge (only giving the stale old Christmas cookies her family didn’t finish before the holiday) as holiday tips.