Opinion and Features Editor
“Americans, on average, expect to spend $998 on gifts, holiday items, and other expenses during the holiday season” (Investopedia).
Why is Christmas so expensive? To me, the winter holidays are a time to make food, spend time with family and participate in traditions. For many, this can also involve either going to Christmas Day service, midnight mass, family breakfast or opening presents in the early hours of the morning.
Forbes Magazine says that the retailers of America (malls, department stores, small businesses, etc.) can expect to make over one trillion dollars during the holiday season. This begs the question: when did Christmas become so commercialized? Moreover, why only Christmas? If you look around a store for holiday decorations, there is normally an end-row of Hanukkah candles and decorations, meanwhile there are shelves full of Christmas themed supplies and decorations.
Bringing the focus back to the Christmas price tag, everything related to the Western idea of Christmas costs money. According to Fortune Magazine, a six foot Christmas tree costs $81, but the price can go as high as $500. For convenience, let’s set the price to $150 for a tree; with the average of $1,050 for gifts and travel, the total spent is over $1,200. That is a huge number for one day of gift-giving.
Here is another one of my questions: What started the extreme consumerism associated with this Christian holiday? For that, we need to take a look at the history of Christmas. The beginning of ‘American Christmas' started in the 17th to 18th centuries, when Europeans (mainly Dutch settlers) moved to the East Coast and brought the idea of Santa Claus. During this time, the gifts given during the holidays were not blenders, mixers, or spa equipment, but instead baskets of candies, fruits and pastries.
Gift giving has been a part of winter celebrations since before the Bible was written. This tradition was added to Christmas after being adopted from previous holidays and celebrations. An example of this would be the Roman celebration of Saturnalia (Sat-er-nal-ee-a). Saturnalia is the celebration of Saturn, the Roman god of agriculture and time. According to History.com, during this week-long celebration, Romans would spend their time dancing, playing music, singing and gift giving. The gifts during this time were simple; people were given wax figures, dates and dice from their family, friends and neighbors.
As the times have changed, so have the expectations for holiday gifts. With the Industrial Revolution, came the invention of factories. With factories, came the introduction of mass production and mass markets. The Industrial Revolution birthed the beginning of consumerism in the United States, particularly consumer capitalism.
According to the WorldAtlas, “Consumer capitalism refers to the manipulation of consumers to purchase a product based on their desire for it rather than an actual need for the good or service.” In the context of Christmas gift shopping, this applies. People buy gifts for others on the basis of what they think will bring joy, even if the feeling and usefulness of the product is temporary.
During this modern day culture of overproduction, over consumption and outrageous price tags, there is not much we can do about the price of the holidays. Perhaps we can bring back gifting food or trinkets, instead of spending multiple paychecks for Jesus’s birthday.
If you’re interested in checking out some of the sources used to create this article, check out the “Saturnalia” on History (history.com), “Average Cost of American Holiday Spending” found on Investopedia (investopedia.com) and “What is Consumer Capitalism” from World Atlas (worldatlas.com).