I've been sleeping heavily for the past few days ever since returning home from Nepal. Rigorous hours of trekking have finally caught up with me and I wake up every morning with dull aches radiating across my muscles.

I'd eat breakfast, and go back to sleep til lunchtime. And I'd nap again til slightly before dinner a few hours after lunchtime.

Moreover, I've been more self-reflective than ever since my return home. For the first time in my life, I had no mood to celebrate Christmas this year. On top of feeling achy and tired, I felt that Christmas this year was just too extravagant, to the point of actually being terribly unnecessary. Experiencing poverty and a life of simplicity while in Nepal has made me so much aware that Christmas is now being far too commercialized each year for its own good, to the point of it becoming just another rich man's reason for helping boost the profits of the many companies using this festive season as an excuse to pump their paycheques.

While in Nepal, people in the mountains and villages continue working hard at their fields and planting rice, cabbages and potatoes and sending their faithful gentle giants of yaks up and down along the Dudh Kosi River to deliver their commodities to sell. School children holding hands with each other, their backpacks swinging behind their backs and they happily squeal and run to attend classes. Trekkers and climbers trudging upslopes with their backpacks, on the physical brink of giving up, but mental strength and resilience supersedes everything else, and each step they take brings them closer, either to Everest Base Camp or to the summit. Mountain guides leading these climbers up and down rocky and slippery paths and superhuman porters hauling 30kg of load for these climbers, risking their lives to carry the extra burden just to earn money.

All this is a far cry from what we're seeing in the consumerist world right now, egged on by capitalist America. We see, we like, we spend. What happened to Christmas being a time of peace and love? When was it that Christmas became defined by the amount of gifts that someone gives or receives, or how much that gift actually cost? Do we really need high tech vacuum cleaners for a gift? Or a brand-new iPad or Smartphone? Why can't we just give a simple hug and kiss, and maybe with a lovely cake around a bonfire together with our friends and we have a round of potluck. Its still the same merry celebratory affair, minus all the extravagance.

Instead of feeling jolly, we feel exasperated as to what gifts to get for people and bemoan at the amount of money that we have to spend.

What has become of us, I wonder.