As we enter November, we also say hello to the shiny tinsel-lined store aisles, the repetitive Christmas music echoing from our radios and the onslaught of the holiday season. Gone are the bags of candy and the cheap rubbery witch masks. In their place appear red felt stockings and plastic mistletoes — 8 weeks before Christmas is officially here.
Don’t get me wrong. Like any other person, I believe the holidays give me a fun excuse to spend entire days purchasing and putting together amazing presents for my friends and family. Growing up, Christmas was characterized by scraping up just enough money to buy my mom some nice jewelry, and Thanksgiving meant the day after feasting with my family, we’d go out together and score some amazing deals at our local mall.
But that’s exactly where the problem lies. The holidays should never simply be about spending money on surface level sentiment. These holidays — Thanksgiving, Christmas and Valentine’s Day to name a few — are too deeply associated with overconsumption instead of remembering and honoring the original sentiment behind their establishment. Rather than acknowledge what these holidays are really about, Americans flock to the malls to participate in what ultimately is the commercialization of these holidays.
The holiday seasons have carved out industries of their own. According to Statista, a statistics portal run by Statista Research and Analysis, the United States Christmas season brought in $3.19 trillion in retail industry sales in 2013, about 19.2 percent of all retail industries’ sales that year alone. That means almost a fifth of sales made in an entire year were attributed to those last few months of the holiday season.
Statista also reports the average amount spent on Christmas cards alone per individual was $29.14. Hallmark reports that 1.3 billion Christmas cards are sent every year. Following Christmas, Valentine’s Day takes second at 114 million and even Halloween prompts card-sending at 20 million cards a year. Although greeting cards may seem like a minuscule aspect of the holiday season, they are actually a huge portion of the entire industry. The term “Hallmark holiday” was even coined to criticize Hallmark’s profitability during these holidays.
Sure, it is implausible and maybe even a little ridiculous to argue that modern holiday traditions should resemble the original rituals concerning these holidays. In modern times, holidays have allowed for inclusivity and more secularism in society. Celebrating Christmas doesn’t solely belong to Christians celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ nor does Halloween only account for Pagans lighting bonfires to ward off evil spirits. Centuries have passed since then, and many would say the same sentiments that were the foundations for these holidays are still there. The common themes of family, unity and gratitude still exist in the way we celebrate these holidays today, but they are often confounded in excessive commercialism.
For instance, when these holidays stray into the malicious realm of cultural appropriation, not only are the holiday industries profiting from gargantuan sales, they are also profiting on racist and bigoted ideals. Cambridge Dictionary defines cultural appropriation as “the act of taking or using things from a culture that is not your own, especially without showing that you understand or respect this culture.” Because it is such a subjective phenomenon, it’s hard to distinguish what cultural appropriation looks like. On Halloween, however, “Native American” garb and knockoff geisha kimonos fall directly into this definition of appropriation. Yet another immense industry, Statista reports that Halloween costumes alone have an annual expenditure of $3.14 billion in the United States.
Halloween is not the only holiday that encourages trivial rituals that undermine the sincere aspects of holidays. Thanksgiving, to some, has become the day before Black Friday. Labor Day means crazy Labor Day sales. Christmas is an excuse to request expensive gadgets or wardrobe.
Needless to say, I am still going to partake in the holidays this year alongside my friends and family. Frank Sinatra’s Christmas station is all my roommate and I will listen to in our dorm for the next couple of weeks. I will, like years before, attempt to scrape up enough money to treat my parents to some nice gifts for Christmas. However, acknowledging that the holidays aren’t all about such superficial concerns is the most important. Finding a balance between acknowledging a holiday’s origins, its original sentiments and expressing such sentiments is difficult but not impossible. Recognizing that greeting cards, family dinners and presents all have a deeper meaning are a good way to start the holiday season this year.
Maris Medina is a freshman journalism major. She can be reached at marismedina29@gmail.com.
