The phenomenon of Christmas creep has been around for a very long time. In fact, it has evolved from a late – Victorian practice of early shopping, then to dealing with overtime and seasonal child labor, and ultimately to becoming a strategic tool for retailers aiming to make profits.
However, it has [description seems incomplete here] in recent years. According to a recent [source missing], Christmas in Britain this year came three weeks earlier than it did a decade ago. Practically speaking, this means that in some stores, Christmas displays showed up in August. In my home country of Greece, Christmas decorations appeared as early as early November for the very first time. This follows an already established trend where it’s not uncommon for Christmas to overshadow Halloween; the [source missing] recently reported its first “Christmas in July.”
Similar to other creeping cultural phenomena, the tough question is figuring out what or who is causing this trend. While it might be easy to find the cause of an action by identifying the person behind it, when a phenomenon is so widespread, where should we look for the cause?
Are we, the ordinary individuals, driving for a months – long Christmas through our consumer choices, or are we being manipulated into an early Christmas and the resulting consumption pattern? The survey behind the FT article examines both aspects. On one hand, it tracks when retailers start stocking Christmas products; on the other hand, it compares when Britons begin listening to Christmas hits. The first aspect points to the market economy, and here retailers [description seems incomplete]. The second aspect points to individuals and their desire to be in a certain atmosphere and feel a particular mood.
Instead of trying to determine which factor comes first, we should understand how the two forces – the market and our individual desires – interact. Such puzzles have fascinated philosophers for a long time. In the 1800s, for example, the German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel used the term Zeitgeist – the spirit of the times – to refer to such widespread and overlapping influences that operate on both macro and micro levels. The word Geist – which is also the German word for “ghost” – precisely describes this diffuse nature: it’s everywhere and nowhere specific.
But if what zeitgeist represents are our most popular ideas and our social habits, then surely by changing those, we can change the spirit of our era. In other words, if most of us suddenly resisted the extension of Christmas by reducing gifts, decorations, and festive songs, the effect would gradually fade just as it gradually grew. In fact, Hegel thought that the Zeitgeist is not just a reflection of the times but contains the potential to overcome a particular period and move forward.
But it seems that no such overcoming is happening yet. The creeping trend continues to progress to the point that Christmas merchandise can be seen in the summer. But what’s the problem with wanting Christmas to come earlier? Why not enjoy the Christmas season for a longer time?
Because it’s a form of escapism. And this might well be the connection between a market that capitalizes on the Christmas spirit and individuals who long for Christmas songs in October.
Humans seem to have an innate desire to escape their current situation and find comfort in socially acceptable ways to pass the time. When discussing why humans find [description seems incomplete] so difficult, Martin Heidegger described this as a struggle to be present, an anxious need to make time pass, to forget our circumstances and move away from the present. Think about how instinctively we reach for our phones when we have a few free minutes.
Of course, we don’t need Christmas to escape the present; we already do it by thinking about our favorite Netflix shows even when we’re not watching them, scrolling through our Instagram feeds, looking at clothes online, or thinking about our next vacation destination.
But the Christmas spirit offers the perfect pre – packaged escape as it meets all the requirements for an escape. It’s as traditional and prescriptive as can be; it comes with a set of reassuring social rituals like gift – giving, decorating, planning dinners, and looking for festive clothes. It fills our time with relevant tasks. And it offers a kind of forward time – travel, the ideal way to pass the time and make it go faster (at least from August onwards).
In the modern Christmas spirit, the manipulative version of what the economist Adam Smith called the invisible hand of the market meets the human longing for structured distraction. It’s both alluring and numbing. There must be a better way forward. But finding it requires us to ask ourselves what Christmas is really about.
