How Advertising Stole Christmas

 

Christmas has become synonymous with mass consumerism and society acts as an emotional bully in its defense. If you go along with the madness, you spend way too much money on gifts, trying to please people on a level you feel is expected. If you object to the over-consumption and over-consumerism, you're called a 'grump' or a 'Scrooge,' or, worse yet, 'the Grinch.'

I love Christmas. My decorations were up the DAY AFTER THANKSGIVING. I buy a new tree ornament each year. I listen to Christmas music pretty much all month long. Sometimes, I'll still listen on the 26th because I freaking love this holiday. I love that there's an entire month of the year when we're all supposed to be kinder to each other, when people walk around caroling, when charity is emphasized and we are encouraged to spend time thinking of others.

However, I dislike that the time spent "thinking of others," has become figuring out how to squeeze a ton of Apple products on your credit card, and how to 'get by' the month of and the month after this gift-giving misery. Can't showing up and saying, "I love you and I'm grateful for you," and then listing all the reasons be enough? Why would I need to buy something that proclaims that message when I can literally say it?

Honestly, I see it all as corporate greed marketing their version of Christmas to us that if we don't buy these things for each other, then we fail at Christmas and we've ruing everything by not buying the "right" gift. It's a supercilious amount of pressure and, frankly, it's ruining the holidays for me. Greed has become complacent with Christmas. Advertisers and commercials have damaged the spirit of the season and I feel like if consumers everywhere don't break the habit we've all fallen into, the pressure to give beyond our means may never cease and the destruction of Christmas will become irreparable.

This isn't a "keep Christ in Christmas," message. This is just asking to keep corporate greed out of it and to maybe not bully the people who see through the scummy spending propaganda thrown at us from every direction for a whole month. Maybe modern "Scrooges" are "grumpy" because they actually love Christmas and we're not the kill joys, we're just the ones who are awake. Corporations are the real Grinch.