It's Chri$tma$! (Christmas and Commercialisation)

Member Name: neinel

Product:	Christmas and Commercialisation
Date:	11/12/00 (19 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Christmas is special to everyone in one way or another, the commercialisation will never truly spoil it

Disadvantages: Trying to stomach the terrible cash ins by the media and consumer market

Yes, it's that time of year again. Christmas. Underneath the supposed importance of Christ's birth lies a sickening capitalist subtext that reveals the event to be no more than an annual moneymaking scam. I'm no bible basher (or Marxist for that matter) but I bet even a mere thirty years ago Christmas was more to do with Christ and less to do with greed. Just look around you, every second advert on the TV is making us aware of ASDA's great range of Christmas ales or Comet's 'lower than ever' Christmas prices - not to mention the truly dire ones advertising local shopping centres, begging you to do your Christmas shopping there by showing an old tramp dressed up as Santa acting all festive. Then, when the day actually arrives, what do we do? Get horribly drunk, collapse in front of a James Bond movie and wonder what the bleeding hell this Christmas lark is all about.

Christmas is an excuse for the fat cats to get fatter and the general public to indulge in scandalous amounts of alcohol, food and terrible TV programming. Have you seen what the BBC have got in store for us this Christmas? It really is beyond words. The highlight of it all is Independence Day. Even Channel 5 wouldn't show that rubbish on a monday night at 9.00pm, let alone tout it as the pinnacle of their Christmas day programming.

I don't think we should all revise our Christmas values and spend the holiday in a monastery; I mean I enjoy the indulgence as much as anyone. That side of Christmas is fine because it is a holiday and people deserve a break from their everyday routines. It's just the media's portrayal of it and the consumer market's exploitation of it that makes me sick. I mean do you see such a big fuss created for Easter (which, as anyone with a basic grasp of Christianity will tell you, is the single most important religious date in the calendar)? No, you don't. So religion clearly isn't at the epicentre of these
supposed religious festivals. I accept that not everyone is into religion and may not care about celebrating the birth of Christ - I'd say the vast minority would put that at the top of their 'purpose of Christmas' list - but Christmas is traditionally a religious festival and to note how it has gradually been transformed into a pawn in the proverbial capitalist game of chess is both remarkable and sickening at the same time.

I've got no great solution or opinions on how we should all behave in relation to this. Things aren't likely to change in the near future, so my view is that we should let each to their own. As an event, be it religious, alcoholic, indulgent, sacred or whatever. It means different things to different people and that's how it will always be. We should just try to ignore the horrible commercialisation of Christmas and enjoy the celebration for what it is to each of us, religious or otherwise.

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