Forum Topic: Has Christmas become too commercialized?
Article 1)
DEBATE: Has Christmas become too commercialised?
By: Nasra Bishumba & Dean Karemera
In 2013, a poll by the Pew Research Center found that Christmas is celebrated more than any other holiday in the US with 90 per cent of Americans celebrating Christmas, including 80 per cent non-Christians.
According to Pew, a third of Americans actually see Christmas as more of a cultural holiday. Even 87 per cent atheists said they still celebrate Christmas.
And America is not alone. There is something warm and cosy about Christmas. Whether you are religious or not, Christmas is that time of the year that simply spells out celebration with your loved ones and reflection on the year you have had. It has always been like that and it probably will remain the same for a long, long time.
So when people say that Christmas has been commercialised, I wonder what they are going on about. What is different right now is the realisation that this is not 1990 but 2015, so people actually have more and better ways to advertise their products and services.
I mean, what do you really expect? Christmas is such a big deal and to say that by advertising they are commercialising the holiday, you are deliberately ignoring the fact that these people are running businesses and that there is absolutely nothing wrong with seizing the opportunity and riding on the ‘Christmas mania’ to increase sales.
Businesses were advertising all year long and sales were there, the difference during the Christmas holiday, is that almost everyone is interested in stocking up. Some people are interested in buying gifts. Everyone seems to advertise what they sell and everyone else is interested in knowing what is on offer. So many people are on holiday and this is their opportunity to spend on their loved ones. Look around you in May, how many families can you see in a shopping mall? Where would they get the time? At least 80 per cent of all the parents are able to finally spend quality time with their children without the stress of work. This is the time and, luckily, for the business people, this is the time to cash in.
Also, everyone seems to be busy these days. Television and the Internet keep you up to date on what is in, who is selling what, the price and for those who need gifts to be shipped in; commercials do come in handy about all that.
People who misunderstand the whole essence of Christmas are the ones who complain that it has been commercialised. For those of you who buy gifts, if you do it as a responsibility instead of something pleasurable, you will curse all the way from your home to the shops.
That said, it’s true that Christmas has changed over time, but to say that it’s too commercial is an exaggeration.
It’s just a commercial holiday, let’s keep it that way
Let’s be honest, we all know that Christmas is a big commercial racket; actually, I tend to think that it’s run by some secret eastern syndicate, you know, the likes of Freemansons, Skull and Bones or The Knights Templar, because the spending and the reasons for spending are beyond this world.
Forget the entire hullabaloo about Christmas being all about family and celebrating the birth of Christ. It’s just another time to spoil kids and have endless parties, especially with ‘summers’ who are back in town to show us how they “roll” back home.” Kids will most probably ask for new clothes and shoes, adults will be busy spicing up meals, making a zillion phone calls inviting visitors and buying drinks they can barely pronounce.
Well, all this can be construed as preparing for a family gathering but how many people do invite their family members? Some people rarely see their relatives, let alone invite them for Christmas. What is supposed to be a religious period has become an occasion that is prepared three months in advance for someone whose birthday we are not even really sure of.
While most people only go to church on Christmas and with less and less people believing in religion and some not believing in Christ at all, it shows us that society sees Christmas as a shopping holiday and society is only too happy to keep this momentum going.
And for this reason, we end up with images of luxury sofas, big houses, nicely wrapped gifts shoved in our faces and expensive holidays. Basically, it’s the old age trick of the carrot enticing the donkey. Work hard, earn money and spend it all during the holiday season.
These days, it is safe to say that even a country’s economy depends on Christmas sales and that numerous marketing strategies by boutiques, telecom companies and other top-of-the-range stores to sell their products threaten the holiday of yore. In fact, the true meaning of Christmas has descended to lower levels as a result of an intense marriage between Christmas excitement and reckless spending.
Although people would like to spend more time with their families around Christmas, and celebrate it the old traditional way, it is quite difficult in an era where people work round the clock. Personally, I’ll be at work on Christmas. Reason? I have to earn a living and when I get off that day, it’ll be time to spend, spend and spend.
So, the question is, is it commercialised or not? Your answer is as good as mine; whether we like it or not, the tables have turned, the rhythms are now more upbeat (contrary to good old Christmas carols) and the spending will be over the top. As people will be nursing January blues, butchers, bar owners, hotels and restaurant proprietors and transportation companies will be smiling all the way to the bank. It’s the law of supply at work here. Happy Holidays!
dean.karemera@newtimes.co.rw
Source: http://www.newtimes.co.rw/section/article/2015-12-25/195556/
Article 2)
Christmas has become too commercialized
Dec 8, 2011
What is the true meaning of Christmas? Why do people go through so much work to get expensive gifts for one holiday that is supposed to be about the birth of Christ?
I know for stores it is so that they can make more money and their stocks go up during that time, but for me it is simply about simple little gifts, not anything expensive or big.
According to Yahoo! finances, stocks for major companies such as Sony, Toshiba and Apple increase dramatically based on the business from the holidays, especially on Black Friday.
Before the 1840s, Christmas was about being with your friends and family and celebrating the holiday. It wasn’t until later that Macy’s and other major retailers started making big deals about Christmas and presents.
PauseMy view is that Christmas is too commercialized now and many people in generations older and younger than me forget what really happened.
To me presents don’t mean that much. I could get $50 and be happy. The problem is how people now portray it — like it is a competition about who gets the best gifts.
My question is why do people spend so much on presents?
Lily Montesdeoca, Normal
Article 3)
How Christmas Became the Most Commercialized Holiday
Dec 28, 2012 10:43 AM EST
You’ve got to hand it to Lucy van Pelt. She called it as she saw it. “Look, Charlie, let’s face it,” she barked in “A Charlie Brown Christmas.” “We all know that Christmas is a big commercial racket. It’s run by a big eastern syndicate, you know.”
As we conclude yet another season of that commercial racket, we are tempted to think that Christmas had once been a pure holiday, full of wonder and free of capitalistic corruption. Yet there is little evidence that such a day ever existed -- and certainly not in the U.S. In fact, the American Christmas ascended to its central place on the national calendar as a result of an intense marriage between sentiment and commerce, an example of healthy, if uneasy, codependency.
In 1800, Americans recognized the holiday in scattered fragments -- perhaps with a church service, a feast or an outbreak of rowdiness. More often, Christmas Day passed unnoted. But the forces of urbanization, industrialization and immigration had already begun to effect significant cultural changes, not least a greater emphasis on the individual home as a haven from the perceived dangers of the public sphere. The home provided an orderly, moral and nurturing refuge from the increased crowding, competition and contention in the public world of commerce and politics.
Domestic Religion
It was in this idealized home that the American Christmas took shape, the scraps and slivers of various folk traditions blended to serve a religion of domesticity. The modern holiday first took form among the urban upper classes, where wives and mothers had the leisure to embroider the celebratory rituals of home life. Children hung their stockings “by the chimney with care,” anticipating the arrival of Santa Claus. Evergreen trees, freshly cut and carefully positioned in the parlor, sparkled with tinsel, candies and hundreds of tiny candles. As churches caught on to the evolving tradition, sacred spaces were soon transformed by music, liturgy, pageants and greenery.
But Christmas’s popularity has, from its formative years, been bound inextricably to the very tumult from which it claimed to be a respite: the burgeoning world of commerce. Rituals set forth at first in modest forms were soon enhanced through the penny press. No better example exists than Clement Clarke Moore’s “A Visit from St. Nicholas,” written for his family’s entertainment in 1823, but soon endlessly reprinted each season in newspapers. In the years after the Civil War, Thomas Nast created a full life and more vivid body for Santa in engravings he did for Harper’s Weekly magazine. Other publications printed patterns to knit for Christmas gifts; explained the etiquette of Christmas dinner; and published countless romantic stories in which orphans and widows helped less-sensitive souls understand “the true meaning of Christmas.”
The press’s elaboration of Christmas kindled countless new business opportunities. When Godey’s Lady’s Book, the most widely read magazine in the nation at the time, published an image of a family gathered around a small tree set atop a table, the idea of a Christmas tree soared in popularity. Woodsmen started heading into the forests each December to cut evergreens to sell on street corners. By the 1870s, parlor Christmas trees had become common, and a new industry was flourishing.
Commercial Cathedrals
F.W. Woolworth -- who had already pioneered a successful business model based on fixed prices and 10 cent inventory -- quickly saw the commercial possibilities in importing Christmas ornaments from Germany where, he reported, they were “made by the very poorest class.”
Tinsel, toys, candleholders, candles, candies, garlands and wooden ornaments found ready markets. Greenhouse-grown poinsettias were sold as early as 1830, but in the 1870s, New York shops began selling them as Christmas specialties. Louis Prang, a German immigrant and the inventor of a chromolithography process, presided over a workforce of hundreds of young women in Massachusetts who hand-colored Christmas cards -- elegant new greetings intended to be sent cheaply to family and friends everywhere. Department stores, novel emporia that tantalized Americans with goods in every size and quality, became cathedrals of commerce, important suppliers of the gifts necessary to take home for family and friends.
By the late 19th century, Christmas ruled over two intertwined domains: the private and public. The lights, sounds and sentiment that symbolized and celebrated home and family had moved outward into public streets and stores. All of which led Charles Dudley Warner to say, in 1884, “We have saved out of the past nearly all that was good in it, and the revived Christmas of our time is no doubt better than the old.”
These days, it is a commonplace to say that the economy depends on Christmas sales and that marketing strategies, such as Black Friday, threaten the holiday of yore. True enough. But less often noted is that the market revolution of the 19th century, and the consumer economy it created, made possible and continues to sustain what we mean when we talk about the “spirit of Christmas.”
(Penne Restad is the author of “Christmas in America” and a distinguished senior lecturer in the Department of History at the University of Texas at Austin. The opinions expressed are her own.)
첫댓글 Great topic~
good ~!