A lot of people celebrate and love Christmas. However, every year decorations come out sooner and sooner. The local Walmart already has a tree up in their entrance and houses in the area are starting be decorated. People are counting down and starting to buy presents and plan their holidays. To be clear, the issue is not celebrating Christmas. The issue is how soon Christmas celebrations start and how materialistic Christmas is becoming. This correlates to the way that capitalism is taking over and many retailers are becoming more focused on selling Christmas rather than celebrating it.
Christmas started out as a historically and traditionally rich holiday. With each passing year more stores focus on decorating and promoting great sales on material objects. Giving presents is a key tradition in Christmas. It has evolved into more than simple gift giving. We now have days such as Black Friday and Cyber Monday where people go out and savagely fight to get the electronics, toys and clothes that will fulfill their wants. People tend to get injured easily during Black Friday sales. There’s always at least one story about someone dying in a store from being trampled, stabbed or beaten over a simple thing like a TV or Xbox. Black Friday sales are also starting sooner now. Some stores even start Black Friday sales on Thanksgiving day, which again is causing Thanksgiving to be overshadowed by the desire for things.
Another issue with starting to promote and decorate for Christmas so early is that it tends to distract from Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is an important American holiday that celebrates harvest. Of course Thanksgiving historically has flaws, but regardless we shouldn’t skip over it to start decorating, listening to carols and buying Christmas gifts. Thanksgiving is becoming more overlooked every year due to premature celebrations of Christmas.
For many families, holidays are a great time to come together and enjoy time with each other. As stores such as Walmart, JCPenney and other large department stores start making Christmas more and more of a Hallmark Holiday and an easy way to make quick money for major corporations, Christmas is losing its strong traditions by becoming this material holiday. It’s also masking the value of other holidays including Thanksgiving. It’s not that Christmas is a bad holiday or that people are losing sight of what’s important, but rather, Christmas is becoming a capitalistic opportunity for retailers to exploit the holiday for profit.
