Consumerism At Christmas: How Advertising Has Infiltrated Our Minds And Our Holidays

I find myself saying this exact same thing every December, but can you believe it's already Christmas time? Halloween feels like it was just last week, and I could have sworn Thanksgiving and its ensuing Black Friday sales were just the other day. 

We all know that the origin of Christmas is celebrating the birth of Christ, but nowadays it's taken on a much different form: 21st century Christmastime embodies consumerism. Everywhere you look you see advertisements for Christmas themed merchandise - be that food, clothes, makeup, home decor, jewellery. You name it, there's a Christmas version for sale somewhere. 

I've been thinking lately about how ingrained consumerism is into our brains; we barely register the fact that we're constantly having products marketed towards us. Whether it's on the sides of buses, at bus stops, on billboards, on tv, or on any web page, we are constantly having sales pitches thrown at us. It's even become a common thing to let you purchase an ad-free version of various mobile apps. For the low price of £1.99, you too can opt-out of making money for someone. 

Out of curiosity, I did a small experiment of sorts and counted how often I got "promoted posts" (aka ads) on various social media platforms. On Instagram it was every 4th or 5th post, on Facebook it was roughly every 5th post. Twitter had an ad for about every 6 tweets/threads - not as bad as the other two, but the fact that around 20% of my feeds on Instagram and Facebook were JUST ADS was a little surreal when I stopped to think about it.

This may surprise you, but I don't oppose advertising as a concept. I think advertising is absolutely necessary in many cases - public health campaigns for example. My issue is with the fact that we've been conditioned to believe we need to constantly be on the lookout for something new to buy, and that the only way to show people we love them at Christmas time is to spend money on them.

I love giving people gifts at Christmas, in fact it's possibly my favourite part of the holiday. But as I've gotten older I've become increasingly aware of the fact that a lot of the things you find in the "Christmas" section in shops are gimmicky, with no longevity. That, and the fact that a lot of big-name companies nowadays are selling products of questionable quality, made with questionable treatment of workers. Just one example is fast fashion companies like boohoo or Missguided - their clothes are often poor quality, and their workers are paid a mere fraction of minimum wage. (See bottom of post for sources.) 

I know that shopping as ethically as possible can be difficult or in many cases simply not an option but, honestly, my point is less about where you shop and more about what you buy. I believe we need to focus more on finding something for a loved one we think will genuinely enrich their life, than on spending money on them just for the sake of it. Christmas has different meanings to different people, but the one thing I think we can all agree it's not about is giving money to greedy CEOs in exchange for gifts with no real value. 

Sources:

• Boohoo workers making clothes "being paid as little as £3.50 an hour"
• Garment workers for New Look, River Island, Missguided, and Boohoo making between £3 - £3.50 an hour
• Leicester garment factories making clothes for Boohoo, Pretty Little Thing and Nasty Gal not taking precautions to keep workers safe from COVID-19
• "The story of a £4 Boohoo dress: cheap clothes at a high cost"