It’s that time of the year again. The time of year where you can sit by the fireplace with a nice cup of hot cocoa and celebrate the cheery times with your friends and family. A time of the year that is perceived with gifts and trees galore. But it feels like there’s something missing, or maybe something that comes before. The smell of the roasted turkey just doesn’t hit you the same when it sizzles through the room as “Elf” is playing on every TV in the house. It’s not a shocker that a majority of people start setting up their Christmas trees right after the Halloween season. Most people feel the need to get into the spirit of giving fairly early before the holiday comes, even if it is at the cost of prioritizing it over Thanksgiving.
The Christmas season seems to start earlier each year. The pure excitement for the world’s most popular holiday just appeals to everyone more than a Thanksgiving dinner. The real Grinch in this is the holiday dilema is the United States’ economy flipping the script for more monetization opportunities.
It’s easy to say exactly why Thanksgiving might be left behind sometimes when it comes to the world preferring a holiday. Sometimes you have people that just start celebrating early in the spirit with holiday carols and decoration, but a bigger reason might be trying to buy everything as fast as possible for the holiday itself. It’s easier to prepare for dinner than it is to try to prepare a huge assortment of presents for multiple people. People might also just simply like the holiday itself without trying to worry about how many crazy deals are being spat out in front of their face.
With the given information from the ‘Shane Co’ newsletter, we can see which states of the USA Google search for specific holidays the most, from the years of 2004 to 2021. Christmas takes the lead with 10 total states having it as the most popular. Right behind it though in second place is the other holiday we’re talking about, Thanksgiving. Why is this?
These Google results prove that not only are both holidays still as popular as one another, but they overshadow most of the other ones. These searches consist of multiple concepts however. The searches could easily be for shopping, images, videos or so many more possibilities. What’s likely for the result of Christmas is possibly shopping results, same for Thanksgiving. It’s not hard to type in things you need for either of the holidays and instantly get pop ups from Amazon or other shopping sites.
It’s easy to say that the missing context for the searches cannot be simply tied to the fact that there are so many of these because of shopping reasons, but there are many other statistics that can prove this.
In this graphic created by the company ‘Genuine Impact’, it lists that the USA has the 4th highest average spending amount for each individual American in the country. Not only is the whopping $1,236 average consisting of gifts, but it also includes food, decorations, and so much more. With a high number like this, it’s usually no surprise as to why it feels like the country is marketing more towards this holiday.
Realistically, not every holiday, or frankly most of the established holidays need decorations. Christmas is one of these special occasions though, as what kind of holiday are you going to give your children if you don’t have gifts underneath the tree on Christmas morning, and tons of trinkets and candy filling up their stockings? Because of how popular we know the holiday is now, we can assume it continues to reign as the celebration powerhouse because of the sheer cost that comes from it.
It is purely intentional from the entire USA market, potentially even the global market to target this holiday. How much money would the higher ups of the world make if you just needed to buy all of your dinner supplies from Kroger one night for Thanksgiving? It’s guaranteed to be a lot less when a mother is trying to buy as much as she can for her kids on Black Friday for some Christmas joy.
A simple counterargument to this entire idea of monetizing Christmas can be concurred from the fact that maybe people just don’t enjoy Thanksgiving as much as Christmas. However, from a survey that was conducted at the school, it shows that most people don’t even agree with this jolly holiday being celebrated early.
From the 270 students of the campus that were quickly surveyed, 150 of them said that Christmas doesn’t need to be celebrated in November. This means no putting up the tree, and just waiting for Black Friday instead of skipping the turkey’s favorite day. Most people wanna enjoy each day separately instead of jumping the gun for the money.
This result could come from the fact that students are a part of a younger generation than the parents who need to buy everything for them this holiday, but it doesn’t stem from the fact that the single most important generation of the holiday is wanting to chow down on a dinner first before singing those noisy carols.
In conclusion, Christmas as a holiday in the USA is being monetized to the fullest extent. This is why it feels as if when you walk around every store during the Fall, you can see a snowman at every corner. There’s no need to clean out the oven after Thanksgiving to prepare for that now profound Christmas dinner, since it was easy to skip over in the first place.
