In recent years, you may have noticed how early the Christmas music starts playing on the radio and how early malls begin to promote holiday sales. No, you are not dreaming or crazy if you have noticed.
It is just the simple fact that Christmas has become too commercialized.
In recent years, people seem to not be as excited to spend Christmas with their families. Every year, there are more department stores eager to post their holiday catalogs in September making it all about the money gimmick and not so much about the consumer.
Through the years, the question on everyone’s mind has been, how did Christmas become so commercialized? According to small business trends, F.W Woolworth was the one who seemed to have started the trend when the department store chain brought ornaments from the German cottage industry to the U.S. mass market.
25 dollars' worth of ornaments were purchased for his variety store in Lancaster, P.A. and the items sold within two days.
Currently, there are millions of ornaments being sold at stores everywhere. The other more common reason could be attributed to the “Coca-Cola Santa Claus,” which made its debut in the Saturday evening post in 1920. Still in 2017, many believe that it’s not the holidays until you see this Santa Claus.
He had the idea to self - publish a book about an Elf who would sit and watch children across the world. He then would report the behavior back to Santa Claus. This is a clear success because to this date, there are countless Elves on the Shelves in homes around the country.
According to the Pew Research Center, 33 percent of those who were surveyed do not look forward to the commercialism/materialism of the holiday. 69 percent think Christmas is about spending time with family.
73 percent of people agree that the true meaning of Christmas is being phased out in favor of new clothes and new gadgets.
This could be because of the excitement over Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Or the eagerness of being one of the first people to get the newest game system.
Most of all, remember that Christmas is to celebrate the birth of Christ.