Consequences of Commercialization

My Thoughts on “The Patron Saint of Capitalism: Parents dream of a less-commercialized Christmas”

Article Link: https://www.greenvilleonline.com/story/opinion/2018/12/15/how-old-santa-claus-history-santa-claus/2221082002/

It is expected that parents would dream of a less commercialized Christmas. Even though Christmas is supposed to simply be a religious holiday, it has managed to spread into secular culture. When Christmas comes about, everyone prepares. Christmas music plays everywhere, there are Christmas lights all over public spaces, stores start to bring out Christmas decorations, the Christmas spirit is everywhere, and everyone that can begins buying gifts. They have to buy gifts and probably even some decorations too. If the parents of some children don’t or can’t buy their children gifts, then the children will likely take it personally. Santa didn’t bring them gifts because they were bad. Even though he is supposed to be “Saint Nicholas, the Christian figure known for bearing gifts and advocating for the poor” he has the opposite affect. It is actually a little ironic. Children who come from well off families will likely find a lot of presents underneath the tree, from “Santa.” On the other hand, children from poor families might not even wake up to a Christmas tree at all.

Analysis of excerpts from Santa Clause, Do You Ever Come to the Ghetto? by Chronixx

Santa Claus, do you ever come to the ghetto
Santa Claus, do you ever wonder why we suffer so
Santa Claus, will you come to the ghetto
Santa Claus, we would like to see where your reindeers go.

It was clear what this song was about from the first line, from the title of it even. At the most surface level, it is about how black children are not able to experience some facets of Christmas because they live in poverty. This is obviously one of the consequences of commercializing Christmas. Because buying things like decorations, lights, and gifts are things that are marketed as part of the Christmas spirit, then children with parents who can’t afford those things, especially the presents, end up feeling left out. Asking, “Do you wonder why we suffer so,” almost sound like they are asking Santa if he cares at all, if he thinks about them.

We see you in the papers,
you were on TV giving out presents to some pickney
Wonder what happen to people like we
Is it because we don’t have no chimney

This excerpt seems to refer to Santa as someone who is a distant figure to them. They see Santa in papers and on TV. They do not get to see Santa in person. The third line is a little upsetting. The child is wondering why Santa doesn’t visit “people like me.” This must be referring to the child’s race. This shows that the child doesn’t just end up believing that they behaved badly in the last year, they believe that there is something fundamentally wrong with them. Then in the last line, there is a little denial. The child is trying to convince themself that the reason Santa never visits their home to deliver presents maybe had to do with the chimney, and had nothing to do with them.

It must be a pain for people to celebrate religious holidays outside of Christmas, like Yule, Kwanzaa, or Hanukkah, just to see Christmas everywhere they look. I remember there was talk about a “War on Christmas” a few years back, which started because people began to greet others with “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas.” Some people are so used to seeing their holiday everywhere, since it is the most commercialized out of all of them, that when the focus isn’t completely on Christmas, it is seen as an attack on it. I think the issue of people seeing inclusion for others as being an exclusion of them, of the norm, is becoming more prevalent. It is especially weird because Christmas is, at it’s core, a religious holiday, and it is strange to assume anyone that isn’t Christian is celebrating Christmas. The over commercialisation of Christmas specifically seemed to have caused a strange rift between religious holidays.

When I still lived with my dad, my family didn’t really celebrate Christmas. I was told immediately that Santa wasn’t real and I never got any gifts on Christmas until I got older. That came after the twins were born, when we left home. The twins are my youngest sisters. We started to celebrate Christmas for them. My mother got a Christmas tree with ornaments. She would also fill up stockings and buy them many presents. My mother would buy things for me and the older siblings in my family too. This is a recent thing, though. I I have never felt any particular attachment to the holiday. When I was younger, I was upset by the lack of gifts only because everyone else was getting them. Since I knew that Santa Clause didn’t exist, I knew that the reason I didn’t get any had to do with my parents, and nothing to do with my behaviour from the previous year. I feel like telling children that Santa is not real could save them a lot of heartbreak, especially if they don’t get gifts on Christmas Day. There is probably a reason that it doesn’t usually happen though. Maybe one reason they keep up the Santa farce is because they see believing in Santa Clause as a stage in their children’s childhood that they should be able to experience.