If you want to know if all of our holidays have been turned into consumer driven shopping orgies, the answer lies in the major department stores. Take a walk through Macy's or Lord or Taylor or any major store in Oct. and notice the Christmas decorations. That's right, Christmas decorations. `Tis the season to break the bank. Our capitalistic society is always looking for a reason for driving consumerism and what better reason than a holiday! If there's a month without one, we'll make one up...just so we have some reason to put some useless piece of crap on sale. What ever happened to all the traditional values that are at the core of all or most of these holidays? Do we as a society even remember?
Since it's the holiday season, let's start with Christmas. This is the number one offender of being a Hallmark Holiday. This is the holiday that is the basis for all of the Christian faith. Christmas is supposed to be a celebration of the birth of Christ. Someone even came up with a very clever phrase to remember that fact; "Jesus is the reason for the season." It seems tha...
1. The main idea is not only that owning stuff is not the key to happiness, it’s also that consumers today own more than they need to thrive which directly impacts the environment. Hill illustrates the environmental impact by showing statistics of global warming today versus the past century, and how consumerism is leading to a hotter climate. Hill debunks claims of buying happiness by discussing a study where stress hormones spike to their highest when people are managing their personal belongings. Hill’s most prominent example that consumerism is not the answer is himself, as he discusses some of the most stressful times of his life being right after coming into a large sum of money and buying whatever he fancied. When Hill concludes his article, he states that “I have less—and enjoy more. My space is small. My life is big” (213).
Christmas has consumed itself. At its conception, it was a fine idea, and I imagine that at one point its execution worked very much as it was intended to. These days, however, its meaning has been perverted; its true purpose ignored and replaced with a purpose imagined by those who merely go through the motions, without actually knowing why they do so.
The realm of higher education is in a state of constant evolution, which can be witnessed on as small of a time scale as a year-to-year basis; however, the more drastic changes are most notable in larger scales, such as five years, ten years, and so on. One of the main forces for change is the student body and their parents, to some extent. Mark Edmundson, a professor of English at the University of Virginia, wrote his essay On the Uses of a Liberal Education: As Lite Entertainment for Bored College Students about the more recent changes of not only universities, but of the student body as well. He laments how consumerism has transformed these institutes of learning into, basically, glorified daycares, and he does make a rather compelling argument by drawing upon his personal experiences as a teacher.
Christmas, a federal holiday since the year 1870; The name “Christmas” derives from Old English Christes maesse, meaning “Christ’s mass.” It has been my favorite holiday since before I can remember. I love the delicious food, the various presents under the tree, and of course, spending time with my family. The holiday celebrations at the Rogers house meant more when the majority of us were still young. Now, we are older, and all have to work, Christmas is the only holiday we get to spend together. Much like, “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson, she writes about a tradition that she wants to continue, just like I wish to continue a lifelong Christmas tradition.
The cosmetic industry was highly influenced by the changes in the way persons consumed. From the development of new perfumes, make-up tools and colors, to the everyday lotions and cream men and women use today, the industry looks much different than it did in the late 19th century.
The first and most key point in The Overspent American, by Professor Juliet Schor is in the title. Why we want what we don’t need? Schor’s narrative discusses the reasons that contributed to the desires of society versus the needs of a comfortable lifestyle. Schor also discusses the drivers that guided this change in society and the effects of those changes on the economy.
Christmas is a special time of year that deserves to be remembered for its true meaning. Every year, Christmas becomes more and more commercialized and society forgets the origin of Christmas. It was not started with cookies, toys, and a fat man that delivers them, but instead it started with a humble inn where our Savior was born. The definition of Christmas is “a holiday on December 25 celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ.” Nowhere in that definition does it say anything about the outrageous pressure society has set on consumers to buy, buy, buy during the Christmas season. Christmas is about presence not presents.
Holden, from The Catcher in the Rye, is used to question Christmas which is thought of as a holy, peaceful and religious holiday, however, modern society has twisted
...f greed, we as a nation need to seriously rethink why we celebrate the holiday, and make amends to our practices in order to embody that meaning.
Holidays have always been known to affect our consumer culture for many years, but how it all began eludes many people and very few studies have been completed on it. Even though some say that the subject is too broad to precisely identify how holidays, especially Christmas, directly affect our market, I have found that people’s values, expectations and rituals related to holidays can cause an excessive amount of spending among our society. Most people are unaware that over the centuries holidays have become such a profitable time of year for industries that they now starting to promote gift ideas on an average of a month and a half ahead of actual holiday dates to meet consumer demands.
Society is constantly changing, and along with it our holidays end up changing. The holiday that society has the largest impact on is Christmas. Not only does society play an important role in changing Christmas, so does time. Society and time together, have the greatest influence on the changes we see in all the holidays. As time goes on, society changes depending on the morals and culture that the people partake in. In this course, we have discussed how Christmas was created as a religious holiday, but as time as went on, it has slowly morphed into a secular holiday.
By definition, Capitalism is an economic system controlled chiefly by individuals and private companies instead of by the government. In this system, individuals and companies own and direct most of the resources used to produce goods and services, including land and other natural resources labor, and “capital”. “Capital” includes factories and equipment and sometimes the money used in businesses (Friedman, 5).
When you look through history you can see evidence of these structures, some have never left and others have slowly morphed into other structures before becoming unrecognizable. Christmas is a structure that was established millennia’s ago that still rocks our culture every year in many different ways, from the religious customs and celebrations, to the economic impact of shopping for gifts, to the government holidays that surround this event. Our social structures are the skeletons for our lives, they are the voices from the worlds long forgotten that influence us, without them our world would not be what we know it to
Capitalism is an economic system in which the means of production and distribution are privately or corporately owned and development is proportionate to the accumulation and reinvestment of profits gained in a free market. Capitalism lead to great changes in banking and business for Europeans It came to Europe after the devastating black death and while Europe was suffering from poor economic growth.
Holidays are a celebration and an enjoyment of festivities. Although they are a commonality across the world, holidays differ between countries and cultures. But, what many do not realize is that holidays are ultimately ideology driven, that is that the group that celebrates these holidays follows a certain set of ideas and beliefs. Whether the ideology is religion based, or politically based, all holidays are centered around ideologies.