Photo by Daniil Silantev on Unsplash

By: Tina Nasiri

When December hits, a frenzy of limited-time deals, sales, and advertisements are out both in real life on the streets and online on social media. All of this is for one reason: Christmas. Suddenly, there is an immense pressure to flock to malls or fill online shopping carts to get the biggest or newest items for presents… So what makes Christmas so special? 

This huge market shift can be attributed to the ever so large prevalence of commercialization. Commercialization in this sense refers to businesses capitalizing on deeply-cherished values associated with Christmas, like gift giving, with new products and services. This began in the 1800s, succeeding the industrial revolution. In the Victorian Era, special gifts were created by publishers and merchants who used Santa Claus for advertising. 

The expectation of spending effort to buy gifts every Christmas can be more stressful than not, and this well established tradition can easily lose its meaning. With high expectations, not receiving something you wanted – but may not even need – can just result in disappointment. If there’s no inspiration behind buying a gift for a family member or friend, what value comes with purchasing a gift? Rather than presents, Christmas is a time that focuses on spending time with the people that mean most to you. There are so many opportunities to gift the people around you with materialistic items they may be interested in or have been looking for, so don’t feel pressured to shop for a Christmas gift solely for the occasion.