Yesterday I overheard a manager briefing her staff on the company's standardized plans for its Christmas products and campaigns. She showed them photos of merchandise that will have a "hard" and "soft" launch on certain dates and urged the employees to keep track of the company's daily promotions throughout December so customers wouldn't be better informed that they were.
I have to say, her pep talk left me cold, and even a little repelled. Yes, of course, all of the spending that goes on at Christmas keeps many merchants afloat and keeps the economy humming. Yes, stockholders demand profits. And yes, Americans like a certain amount of predictability and "branding": they expect each store in a chain to be pretty much alike. I know all that. But defining Christmas in terms of how to hawk gift cards and how often to change the canned soundtrack just seems phony (to quote Holden Caulfield).
This is why Thanksgiving is increasingly becoming my favorite holiday. It's one day. It's on a human scale. Everybody celebrates it. They haven't made it into a commodity with must-have geegaws and gimmicks and promotional tie-ins, except for maybe the free turkey offer at the grocery store. And as my regular readers know, I will be the last person to complain about that.
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