Turn on the news the day after Thanksgiving, and you may witness an unsettling sight. Black Friday is crazy — even chaotic — to say the least. There is screaming, fighting and competition. Where’s the turkey, the family, the tradition? Thanksgiving, like many other American holidays, has been trampled by commercialization.
In the past decade or so, Black Friday has tainted one of America’s most cherished holidays. What started as an opportunity for stores to make money during the holidays has spun out of control into a frenzy that consumes tradition and brings out the worst in people.
Instead of spending Thanksgiving giving thanks for what we do have, Black Friday is all about what we don’t have. We spend one day with friends and family, grateful to have the important things in life. Then the next day, people are suddenly fighting over the last flat-screen TV. Some stores stay closed the whole weekend, and refuse to participate in the madness, but most bombard people with ads and deals that push them to buy their merchandise.
The holiday season has moved away from American culture and family tradition, and has become associated with stress. This is especially true for Christmas. Parents feel the pressure to buy an excessive amount of presents for their kids and family.
Companies take advantage of the holiday anxiety and continue to create more ways for Americans to spend money. Stocking stuffers, Christmas trees, lawn inflatables, even wrapping paper are all things that stores have branded as “necessities,” perpetuating the false idea that you can’t properly celebrate Christmas without them. The material aspect of the holidays has replaced the actual meaning — being surrounded by family, friends and the people you love.
Where did this pressure to buy gifts come from? In the Christmas story, baby Jesus receives gifts from the three kings and the shepherds, but gift-giving is not the central idea of the story. Then again, the Christmas story and Christmas today are extremely different.
Christmas has drifted away from being a religious holiday, and that is evident by the people who celebrate it. Many people may see this as a good thing; in America, 81 percent of non-Christians celebrate Christmas. A study conducted by Pew Research found that “only about half [of Americans] see Christmas mostly as a religious holiday, while one-third view it as more of a cultural holiday.”
Perhaps Christmas has become more inclusive. Thanks to the free market making Christmas an almost secular holiday, the holiday spirit and the season of giving are things that everyone can participate in.
But does it really include everybody? What about the families that can’t afford to buy gifts? Today, a Christmas without presents is hardly a Christmas at all. How do they explain to their kids that Santa won’t be bringing them any presents this year? Imagine how excluded and disappointed that child would feel.
Additionally, in order for Christmas to include lots of people, it has had to sacrifice its true meaning. The story of baby Jesus and the nativity has been replaced by Santa Claus, and the religious significance has been lost, at least overwhelmed, by all of the commercial noise.
The pressure to buy, buy, buy has always been emphasized in American culture, but now holidays of cultural and religious significance are being used as a marketing ploy. This is not just with Christmas and Thanksgiving. Veterans Day, Fourth of July, President’s Day; holidays that were built on tradition and American pride are now a platform for car and mattress companies to sell their product. Think about Valentine’s Day. When did it shift from “Saint Valentine’s Day” to “Valentine’s Day”? Do we know what we are celebrating? Or are we blindly celebrating these holidays because it has become the societal norm?
Almost every holiday is associated with a product, a necessity. Holidays deeply rooted in our culture have been “Americanized”, and become less about family and love and more about material good. Commercialization has made it more about how we celebrate holidays and less about why.
Thanks giving was fine. Don’t you think it’s a bit humorous that you describe every holiday as becoming “Americanized” when the first culture to integrate gift giving/receiving was Germany?