The industrialization era greatly effected how people celebrate holidays. The reason so many holidays have been commercialized in the way they have is because of the creation of new consumer goods and the development of a more commercial society. When mass production began to play a huge role in how society operates is when the commercialization aspect of holidays really took off.
Christmas is the most commercialized holiday that is celebrated in the US today. This holiday was originally created to recognized the birth of Christ and to be centered around the beliefs of Christianity. Today, many people celebrate Christmas that don't have a Christian set of beliefs . Christmas has become very centered around the lights, trees, presents, cookies, music, movies, and egg nog. This is most certainly because of the materialistic society that we live in today. This time of gathering and recognizing the birth of Jesus has suddenly turned into a focus of waking up with dozens of gifts around the Christmas tree. It's been transformed into a time for stores to obtain an economic advantage by selling more merchandise to busy shoppers.
Thanksgiving is also another huge commercialized holiday. This holiday was originally created to simply gather around with friends and family to enjoy a meal and recognized the things in your life that you are thankful for. Thanksgiving has made it's way to seeming like just a "step stone" on the way to Christmas. People quickly finish up their Thanksgiving dinners just to rush out and wait in long lines to get the best Black Friday deals. Black Friday is a great example of the extent that holidays have began to be commercialized. In some ways it has caused the holiday of Thanksgiving to loose it's true meaning. The whole point of celebrating Thanksgiving is to give thanks for what we have, and then the same night people rush and wait in huge lines to buy more.
Other smaller holidays such as Mother's Day, Father's Day, and Valentine's Day are also prime examples of how today's materialistic society, caused by mass production, has effected the true celebration of the holidays. Mother's and Father's Day both were created to simply recognized the hard work and show appreciation to your parents for all they do for you. This still happens today, but has definetly been altered to showering them with gifts, candies, and flowers. Valentine's Day was also created to celebrate love and togetherness, to simply show the people you love that you care about them. This meaning still stands, but has also fallen into a very commercialized holiday by purchasing cards, balloons, cakes, candy, flowers, jewelry, exc.
All of these holidays have became targets for companies and stores all over the country. The commercialization aspect is only getting worse. For example, Black Friday use to begin around 12am on the Friday after Thanksgiving. Now, marketers have developed a strategy that opening earlier on
Thursday night (Thanksgiving night) draws in more and more customers. Strangely enough, the commercialization of Christmas has been so drawn out that it is beginning to affect the true meaning of the Thanksgiving holiday.
The aspect of consumer culture have greatly affected this idea of commercialized holidays. For example, www.macualay.cuny.edu says, "Advertisers are well aware of powerful, cultural attitudes in this country which impute prestige to practices of conspicuous consumption." So, marketers and advertisers are well aware of the important role they play in the celebration of today's holidays. The era of mass production has caused our society to not appreciate materialistic things as much as we would if industrialization had not occurred.
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| The image above shows an average department store on Black Friday, and the hectic lines of people anxiously awaiting the sales. |
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| This image shows the awareness of how over commercialized Christmas has become because of industrialization and the consumer culture that has been formed. |
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| This image shows the top commercialized holidays that we celebrate today, and a few statistics on the commercialization of these well-known holidays. |
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| This image illustrates the point I made in my article about Thanksgiving loosing it's meaning because of how over-commercialized Christmas has become. |
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| The Christmas tree has become the most well-known symbol that represents Christmas. |
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