Has Christmas turned into a excuse to go shopping?
Christmas has just passed. Traditionally speaking Christmas is a religious holiday, but today this is the holiday when stores have sales, when new products are released, and when everyone is looking to buy presents. Christmas may be rooted in religion, but today it is that time of the year when sales abound, creating a good excuse to buy things.
Around Christmas time, people begin to look for presents (out of tradition, and habit one might say). This is when the text messages, and emails come with messages such as “In celebration of Christmas we are giving the following discount.”, “Give a special gift”, or “Make this holiday special.” These types of messages are geared toward people’s habit of buying presents, and take advantage of it by letting us know that we can buy more with less money than usual. This type of advertisement has resulted in people, including those who do not celebrate Christmas out of religious reasons, buying more than they normally would; the sales and special offers caused by the holiday act as incentive to go out and spend money. In this sense, Christmas is no longer just something religious, but a chance to sell more products and to buy things. Christmas is now more commercial than anything else; what is Christmas without advertisements and discounts?
A lot of holidays now come attached with sales and special events; we now live in a world where anything is used as excuse for promoting products and services, which causes increased spending. This chain of events (where a holiday causes promotions and increased spending), now seems normal; would an opposite chain of events seem normal, or expected? Holidays are no longer just that, but events where businesses get to sell more, get new costumers, and get a lot of advertisements out there.