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December 25, 2004
The True (Non-Denominational) Meaning of Christmas
'Tis the season for giving, but Q4 retail sales are aight!
Though certainly the consensus pick for "Greeting That Manages to Convey All the Warmth and Bonhomie of the Christmas/ Hanukkah/ Kwanzaa Season Without Risking Offending Someone's Conception of God" there's just something so empty about deploying "Happy Holidays" during the month of December. So wishy-washy. So non-committal. So cowardly. Though we must certainly tip our hats to the folks at The O.C. and Virgin Mobile for their respective "Chrismukkah" and "Chrismuhanukwanzukah" gags in re: this topic, our general cultural unease about the potential shame of using a religiously insensitive holiday greeting really seems to miss the point of the holidays. It's not that our holidays don't have significant religious traditions behind them, or that our culture hasn't co-opted these religious holidays into a more general humanist milieu of Caring/ Sharing/ Giving, but to focus on the religious (and even the humanist) parts seems to miss the larger import of these holidays today.
Christmas, Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa are no longer primarily religious holidays. They are capitalist holidays. The rise of the December holidays mirrors the emergence of the United States as the dominant economic power in the world. As the dominant global economic power, the United States, specifically in the past 25 years, has been distinguished by its extremely high consumption and low savings rates, especially when compared to other developed nations. Simply put, America likes to spend money. And there is no time of year that motivates more spending than the holidays, specifically December -- we've been clever enough to engineer a set of holidays that are specifically structured to encourage high levels of consumption.
Across all industries, December prompts overall spending that is 1.2 percent higher than any other month of the year. In certain retail sectors, the sales numbers for December are even more dramatically high. Jewelry claims a whopping 23 percent of its business in December; consumer electronics does 15 percent of the year's take, and a broad range of other categories do just short of 15 percent. It is difficult to isolate a non-seasonal consumer good whose yearly performance is not determined by its sales performance in the fourth quarter, and specficially December. Marketing schedules, product launches, and advertising spending across a broad range of product categories are all focused around the holiday season. It is hardly an overstatement to say that December makes the American economy go.
(That would be the same American economy that affords us portable MP3 players, High Definition televisions, insanely cheap food products at Costco, affordable energy, and political stability. All quite lovely, actually!)
Thus, don't worry your sweet little head about offending people by using the wrong holiday greeting, since what we're actually celebrating is the delicious bounty of American market capitalism! And the only people that American capitalism will offend are communists, and they tend to be dirty heathens anyway. So, Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Kwanzaa, and of course, HAPPY HOLIDAYS! Here's to the glories of market capitalism!
Posted by thatkid at December 25, 2004 11:58 PM under
Biznass
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