THis is my take on it...it's one half of an essay I wrote this semester
American Christmas sucks! How dare I disgrace the most important holiday in the western hemisphere? I have proof! Or, at least support. With time, customs change. With the involvement of money, customs change even faster. In the age of commercialization, money is connected to most aspects of life. The United States of America is a bright and shinning example of that. Nowhere else is a spiritual holiday turned into a huge money-making machine. Believe it or not, there are places where the society has not been crippled by the deteriorating influence of money. One of these places is Slovakia: a country where the free market economy and democracy have not reached adulthood yet. In the United States of America, commercialization has ruined Christmas.
Christmas in the United States is not a time of peace and love. It is a time of stress, frantic shopping in crowded shopping centers and streets, traffic jams, and overfilled mall parking lots: a time of complete chaos.
In the United States, Christmas has transformed from a celebration of Christ’s birth, to a celebration of the credit card. Giving and receiving is the central idea of American Christmas. Sadly, it is the only idea. Love is expressed by the amount of money spent on presents, and the peace in one’s household is directly proportional to the size of the diamond on the ring. According to the National Retail Federation, the estimated total holiday spending in the United States this year will be around $219 billion (par. 1). Yes, the money American consumers spend on Christmas presents could cover the national debt of some smaller countries. Many, if not all, people feel pressured to get “at least something small.� Otherwise, they could be viewed as scrooges. That is arguably the “worst� thing that can ever happen to a human being. Let us all try to please our friends and family, and secure their love with useless gifts!
The American Christmas craze starts as early as the end of October. On the shelves of Wal-Mart, one can find Christmas decorations right next to the Halloween costumes. The shopping spree lasts at least twenty times longer than the holiday itself. This has developed gradually, and the situation is developing towards an even longer preparation phase. Soon, Americans will be buying their Christmas trees in August.
Most of the stress is a result of frenzied advertising. The manufacturers of goods and the providers of services pressure the public that buying is necessary; even more, that buying is essential. When sending the credit card bills prior to Christmas, the companies attach “useful� Christmas-presents checklists, which include extremely important people such as the mailman, hairdresser, and even paperboy. While the first week of the spirited ad campaign evokes warm feelings that remind one of sitting in a comfortable chair next to a fireplace in a darkened room that is lit only by the lights on the Christmas tree and the soft light of the fire, the following six weeks are annoying as hell. During Christmas and the two-month-long preparation for it, consumers are bombarded with ads: “Our product is a must-have for every so and so!� However, that is not surprising in a land where the central figure of Christmas, the jolly, red-cheeked Santa Claus, is a product of clever advertisers from the Coca Cola Company. Of course, the original St. Nicolas, a stern patriarchal figure with a body mass index considerably lower than that of the present Santa Claus, is not appealing to customers, and therefore, not useful for the commercialized American Christmas.
The act of shopping can become a perilous undertaking. Since the holiday season is so much longer than the actual holiday, people spend more time in the mall than enjoying the “holy day� in their own living rooms. Everyone knows that it is tough to find a close-to-the-door parking spot in the parking lot of a mall on a Saturday. During the holiday season, it is even tougher. From afar, one can see the never-ending chain of cars entering and leaving the lots around the shopping centers. I was fortunate to observe this ritual from a helicopter once: the cars resembled colorful flies gathering around a fresh pile of feces.
Once successfully inside, people have to beat their way through the sea of bodies in order to get that “small something.� Fights over the last thing that is popular at the moment are not unusual. This year, Halo 2 (an action 1st-person shooter game) might actually cause some real deaths
i hope harvey bans you just so i can piss on your digital grave.
~mommy
