The Ongoing and Hateful Expansion of Christmas/Xmas/Halloween Seasons

am i gonna go full gen-x? yes

we used to have seasons in the last third of the year, which perhaps involved leaves falling/american football/wistful memoirs of english public school lads reuniting with their chums

now we have six full weeks of #SpookySeason and two months of xmas crap.

also BLACK FRIDAY is an ongoing -- perhaps even weeks-long -- vibe rather than a referencing an actual day that humans might experience

i worked in bookstores for almost ten years; i never need to hear a christmas song ever again.

i'm told that some iconic britishes retailer (idk) already released its holiday advert a week ago.

the local brooklyn christmas tree stand has already opened a full week before (american) thanksgiving.

i mean yeah it's just endless capitalism! but it sucks

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqiUAVUXPYU

I'm not even American, but my personal rule is that I don't want to hear a single Christmas song before U.S. Thanksgiving.

for me it feels these past few years have seen less of xmas starting early, but maybe it's just the circles i swing in.

The consumption has been getting ratcheted up and up, and the tat is getting tattier and plastic-ier and it's at a practically convulsive level as people's quality of, and stability in, life gets worse. I hate it, obviously. I'm on record being grouchy about seasonal decorations in multiple places on here. But I also don't think can keep getting infinitely worse and imo people are getting tired of it and/or increasingly can't afford to participate/it's just not papering over the chasm like it used to.

I don't really have people with those kind of shopping or consumption-centered priorities in my life, but in the last handful of years I've been in contact with a few of them via my ex. Every room, the whole garage, every storage area, CRAMMED with tacky seasonal stuff and excess decor to the point of not being able to live in their homes, in their own home spaces that should be for humans. It's dystopian.

Working with and talking to a lot of extremely lonely people, many of whom will be even more lonely over this period due to support/mental health services being on break/counsellors on holiday, i'd like to take every TV / online xmas advert featuring happy joyous perfect families and burn them all forever. Advertising creates enough waste as it is, but the human misery of this stuff for a month or even 2 months nowadays is fairly incalculable.

I am somewhat dispassionately curious about the reasons behind this. obvs CAPITALISM but like idk why are so many people so into Spooky Season or any of these mass cult holiday phenomena, is it phantom limb monoculture? Like with what in orbit just described: before we had holiday metastasis what would people like that have done instead, what cultural hole is it filling?

less chin-stroking: I HATE that Canada does Black Friday, absolutely pathetic wannabe loser shit, humiliating and insulting.

maybe it is just eating the slop that's forced on us through mass communications, Adorno was right!, pretty sad to think about in that case

Probably a lot of things? Happiness and satisfaction and a sense of security in life, having something to look forward to, some moments of enjoyment that you've "made it" and are living your life "right" and fitting in, have something to be proud of. Every positive emotion that can be supplanted by scarcity and anxiety and fear. Idk man it's kinda everything.

On a purely personal level, there's a home goods store that I really like, love the aesthetic, wish my whole life looked like that, IG ready oh yeah. I went there when my relationship was dying/dead and needed to be amputated, and I felt compulsive about finding things to make my life more beautiful and bring me pleasure. A year later I'd ended the thing and although my life was smaller, it was also pure and not overshadowed by my personal moral crisis, and I still thought the home goods were very nice but I didn't need any of them.

xp hm yes fair point!

I ask because obvs we need to fill that hole with more nourishing things, but uh I am staying p far from the thread now

Those w Capital know how bad the economy is going to get in the visible term and started the xmas protocols right after halloween to bleed you out before the soup lines

I felt compulsive about finding things to make my life more beautiful and bring me pleasure

Well put and relatable. I struggle to see halloween & xmas decor in that same light, but recognize that that's a matter of taste / upbringing, etc

decline of religious belief is a biggie

Do you think? Can you say more?

Ime people who consciously stop prioritizing religion in their lives are pretty happy about it but I could be persuaded that we are missing something like ritual or connection.

Black Friday started 2 weeks ago

religion is what I was handwaving at. but I often think the decline of religion explains a lot but/and absolutely don't think religion was a positive force in many people's lives, i.e., what are the underlying psychological and social needs driving religious belief? which io's "kinda everything" is the correct answer to, I think?

Xp - some of the early Black Friday sales are small independent retailers and craftspeople… like, it’s definitely a sign of economic badness, but it’s not just evil big amazon etc

what are the underlying psychological and social needs driving religious belief?

Yes. This is the question. Religion was created as a tool of power and made to be appealing to human psychological and social needs. It's not an accident that it works that way.

Xp i.o. and rob —- my mom was telling me about her friend who is this smart progressive woman who does prison ministry. And that’s … idk … a grim place, and faith/religion plays a different role than for the rest of us who aren’t incarcerated

I got beat up on in my friends online chat for pointing out how, whether b/c of Instagram or maybe because the last five years I take a walk ever morning, houses set up seasonal decorations earlier and more elaborately. I understand people need things to look forward to.

xxp Sorry, organized religion and specifically I'm saying Christianity which by default is probably? what you mean when talking about Americans' decline in observance, statistically speaking.

I meant decline of other common rituals (saints holidays, major feasts of the Church) where secular ones (and Christmas is secular now) take place.

I don’t want to participate in a discussion on religion because I think I am fundamentally at odds with most of you about whether the loss of common rituals was ultimately a good thing, and the loss of a common understanding of our place in the world around us was good or bad.

I think all of us could make a list of positive benefits religious practice can provide and a list of extremely terrible effects religious organizations have had over the millennia.

I don't see predominantly secular societies like the US swinging back to old-school religiosity any time soon — nor do I see more religious societies as better off. So I guess the question is how to get to a place where people can have things like a sense of purpose and meaning, community, moral and ethical guidance, material and emotional mutual aid, social rituals of celebration & mourning etc. from situations that aren't shot through with domination, mechanisms of shame & guilt, patriarchy/racism/casteism, economic exploitation — and aren't simply hollow capitalist echoes of these things.

xp I'm pretty open to the last two, I just found Christianity more damaging than helpful on the whole, as a made-up way to try to fill the need for rituals, icons, and uhh cosmology I guess you could say.

just found that Black Friday has been listed as a holiday on my google calendar

probably should simply be happy that they didn't block out two weeks for it

Xp Tbh Jesus gives me the creeps but i absolutely adore Sabta Claus and could maybe get behind a religion with Santa as its figurehead, he is so cuddly and jolly and kind. Some doublethink: i loathe overconsumption but giving presents is his love language, we would need to work on the "naughty or nice" thing tho. I could get down with a cult of Santa.

I'm just here for the hate

https://preview.redd.it/zfslkk1bp7w51.jpg?width=640&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=1f855239599699fbc13cd8691cdaab454aeba75d

yeah the 'reason for the season' is neither Sweet Jesus Christ (as intoned by Lena Horne), nor Santa Claus, nor making the kids happy

it's just buying stuff in an effort to make your kids not hate you

fortunately i, who was never given an atari and have no children, am totally above all that

i will say the Eartha Kitt song ‘Santa Baby’ makes me wince because she demands so many expensive gifts, it’s like what does she want anyway his blood? Poor lovely Santa. I just want him to come down the chimney so i can give him a big hug and a cookie.

Black Friday sales are a thing in the UK now. We used to have post-Christmas sales which began in January; they now begin on Boxing Day. Someone somewhere is likely trying to work out how to get us to adopt Thanksgiving.

Happiness and satisfaction and a sense of security in life, having something to look forward to, some moments of enjoyment that you've "made it" and are living your life "right" and fitting in, have something to be proud of.

I'd never thought of it this way. It's a really good point.