the rix mix

You wanna buy a laptop at a supermarket, fine. But it's gonna cost you another two-ninety-nine-ninety-nine to upgrade it to the quality of a marginal $600 laptop.

Christmas season demonstrates why the religious right never had a chance in the culture wars. The best offense assholes like Bill O'Reilly can up come up with is "Nyah nyah, we'll boycott your store if your decorations, ads, & underpaid clerks say Happy Holidays rather than Merry Christmas." Some retail giants responded with, "Alright, then we'll say Merry Christmas, too. Whatever it takes to get you idiots in the store." The War on Christmas is over, because Christmas is now first & foremost about selling & buying product. Any product. People wait for Christmas to purchase everything from TVs & computers to mattresses & refrigerators. & of course, toys.

It wasn't all that long ago - I'm not talking ancient history - when the main selling point for the Christmas shopping season was getting us to buy lots of presents for other people. Some popular stuff was on sale & some wasn't. That's over. Now the retail industry nakedly promotes the season as an opportunity to buy expensive stuff for ourselves. The people camping outside the electronics stores aren't there to purchase a deeply discounted flat screen TV they'll wrap up in decorative paper & ribbon & put next to the Christmas Tree as a surprise for someone else.

The old "Do your Christmas shopping early" advice was not only to avoid the rush, but to take advantage of Labor & Columbus Day sales. Christmas was an undependable time for bargains on toys & big ticket items. No more. The retail industry whined long & loud about how much it depended on Christmas to turn a profit. So maybe the American consumer finally got wise to this: the big box & chain stores need us at Christmas more than we need any particular one of them. We can comparison shop. That Christmas has become a cutthroat sales season is a victory for shoppers. Very little remains of the Christian significance, which had already been obscured by the potlatch spirit. We're passing beyond the stage in which we demonstrate our status through absurd generosity. Now the goal is to obtain & display as many expensive personal possessions as possible. The purpose isn't merely to "keep up with the Joneses" or upstage them but to completely humiliate them. Even if it requires refinancing one's home & blowing the money on things that immediate depreciate in value & eventually become junk.

Labels: culture, holidays