Our Society Is Overly Materialistic. We Center Our Lives on Acquiring Material Things at the Expense of Such Traditional Values as Family and Education.

Topic 2 " Our society is overly materialistic. We center our lives on acquiring material things at the expense of such traditional values as family and education."

I agree with the issue that our society is becoming too materialistic. People are involved into a commercial world and forget their responsibilities to this society. The traditional value is taken place by materialistic culture. This is because that there is too much temptation to resist in this world, such as luxurious cars, vacations and clothes of brand names.

Parents do not spend enough time with their children. Today's children get more and fancier toys to play. Parents buy these toys to please their children. However, parents would not to sit down with the children to read a book together. Parents are always say, "We're too busy." Of course, they are very busy on making money and spending money on luxurious cars, vacations and clothes of brand names. Family time is occupied by shopping at the Mall. When I was a child, all stores were closed on Sunday. My parents, my sister and I spent a whole day to enjoy cooking and eating together. We had so much fun by doing this. The family relationship has been very close since then. In contrast, today's families prefer to go shopping and eat at McDonald's on Sundays. In addition, children are looking forward to the new toy of McDonald's. In my opinion, the children who have grown up at McDonald's can only be materialistic in the future. Family value become unnecessary in people' life.

Holidays are not celebrated with traditional value as before. Our holiday traditions bring people together and allow us to feel the warmth from family and community. The gifts and food that we share are all about expressing a sense of gratitude, joy, and love. Nevertheless, at Christmas, lots of people feel stressed out about buying and giving gifts around the holidays. There are so many commercial advertisements to lure people to spend money. The Christmas gifts become more and more expensive. No wonder that we often hear about people having the "holiday blues" - feeling sad. Similarly, children's birthday consume too much. To celebrate a birthday party, the parents usually pay about $150.00 to a fun place such as McDonald's, Chucky cheeses, or children's gym for a birthday party and spend at least $100 more for gifts, goodie bags and birthday