The commercialisation of Christmas

By Amirah Datwani

Very few people start celebrating Christmas on that day, or even in the same month. It seems like as soon as Halloween ends, Christmas trees are going up and malls are decked in red and green. Christmas has become central to the marketing of almost anything when it’s November or December.

On Netflix, formulaic Christmas movies get quickly and rapidly added to the streaming service’s catalogue around the end of November, every single year. Literature-related platforms like Goodreads also start marketing Christmas books with similar storylines at the same time. Companies are constantly competing to outdo each other in commercialising Christmas.

But why is Christmas so marketable? How did what started out as a religious holiday become such a huge generator of money for companies?

It started out as a celebration and observance of the birth of Jesus Christ, and has now expanded into an international, cultural holiday, likely due to the influence of Christianity in the modern-day world. In addition to this, Christmas was traditionally seen as a festival that involved charity to the poor. In fact, charity was an integral part of the celebration, and Christmas was, and sometimes still is, usually discussed with this in mind.

This is why the commercialization of Christmas has led it to lose its meaning. Having become so widespread, a festival that prides itself on embodying goodness should spread more good in the world, but instead, limited edition Christmas products, every franchise in existence creating themed advent calendars, and Christmassy rebranding of regular products populate the markets, and the holiday devolves into a simple marketing tactic, just another way to generate money and increase profits.

This says a lot about the corporate world as a whole - when presented with the choice of authenticity versus money, the most profitable option is always chosen. The commercialisation of Christmas isn’t just the slight revamping of a holiday; it’s representative of how corporate greed is draining all non-monetary value from meaningful things, all in the name of wealth.