By Emily Scott
Business and Op-Ed Editor

The winter months hold a special place in the hearts of people. It is the time for the biggest holidays of the year; Christmas and Thanksgiving. These holidays have deep spiritual and religious roots in which people give gifts and are thankful for the lives they lead each day. With deep ties to the concepts of modesty, humility and thankfulness, it is a time for families to get together and appreciate all that they have.
When turning on the television, it changes the entire experience of the season. Flipping through channels, each commercial has the same jingle bell ring to it with the expression of happy families. Ending the commercial, it usually includes some sort of huge deal that could be found at the local mall. The entire concept of Christmas and Thanksgiving is being completely commercialized by the media in an unfortunately, successful attempt of making money. Is that what the idea of the holidays, a time to spend with loved ones has turned into?
It is easy to lose the meaning behind the holidays. It may be different to many, but it definitely has one centralized idea. The holidays are a time to spend with family. It’s the time to gather together in whatever environment is comfortable and forget the problems faced.
Today, it has become a contest between corporations to rake in the most customers and their money. According to American Research Group, an average family spends roughly 801 dollars on gifts for Christmas or other holidays. Christmas, one of the biggest holidays in the United States, stemmed from the reflection in the birth of Christ. Yet, that meaning has been lost in the more preferred way of viewing the holiday; an excuse to buy gifts in exchange for the other person as well. It is now an explicit form of economic stimulus for slow times. With that, many stores begin their Christmas sales as early as October; losing touch of other holidays such as Halloween and Thanksgiving.
The dawn of the internet is to blame in this shift in the meaning behind the holidays. It has turned into a bloodbath for the “super deals”. Surprisingly, the death-count this year for Black Friday was only one, but with 15 injuries. The fact that there was even a single death is outrageous. These are the stakes people will go to for the deals on Thanksgiving, instead of being with their families. Black Friday has been the busiest shopping day of the year since 2003, according to ShopperTrak. While most people are still recovering from the copious amounts of food they ingested that day, people rush to the local mall cutting their family times short. Originally, the term ‘Black Friday’ concerned the stifling traffic people faced the day after Thanksgiving. Now, due to the commercialization, media uses this idea to describe the start of the holiday shopping season and mark the day retailers turn a profit for the year—the day ‘they are in the black’.
There is no reason to deny that Thanksgiving, Christmas and these other holidays are now consumer-based. If we just recognize this idea and decide where to go on it – to spend more quality time with our family—we’ll probably have a more enjoyable holiday. These holidays are a great excuse for businesses to exploit peoples’ feelings of guilt for profit. The hype of the holidays, disguised under the “spirit of giving”, is just away to suck money out of people. The question is, when will we move away from the madness of “Hallmark holidays”? Unfortunately, it is hard to foresee this without some sort of commercial revolution.