The Meaning of Boxing Day

Yesterday was Boxing Day. Virtually no Americans know the meaning or origin of that holiday, but it is so strongly associated with returning Christmas gifts that many people actually assume that it refers to placing merchandise back into boxes and taking them back to the stores. Worse still, retailers seem to be playing on that association so actively that in coming years I won’t be surprised if Boxing Day is actually recognized throughout the United States as the gift return holiday.

To my knowledge, Kohls was the worst offender, having scheduled a 5 AM opening for December 26^th. Other big box stores weren’t far off with their early openings and special promotions. There is a nascent trend towards turning the day after Christmas into a new Black Friday. All of the commentary I’ve already written here about how consumerism detracts from the enjoyment of non-shopping traditions applies tenfold to Christmas over how it applied to Thanksgiving.

My heart goes out to anyone who typically celebrates Christmas but has to work on that day. So it made me sad to see that each of the Wilson Farms stores and Tim Horton’s in my area were open throughout the holiday, and were awfully well-populated. It’s an unsympathetic employer who makes his employees work on what is supposed to be a cultural holiday on which most Americans gather together, relax, and celebrate the closing year. Even if they come from a distinct culture, I think at least that one day of rest ought to be a near-universal perk of working in America.

Added to the number of people who had to actually push coins across a retail counter on Christmas Day, I’m certain that early-morning promotions as major stores meant that overnight crews were required to setup that night, which presumably shortened of otherwise impeded some people’s gatherings with their friends and families. As consumers, making a shopping holiday of Boxing Day does a disservice to others who had, or would have, celebrated Christmas the day before.

But my concern is really for everyone, whether the new consumerist push obligated them to sacrifice a bit of Christmas or not. I find it appalling that returning gifts after Christmas is now assumed to be part of the holiday season. Personally, I’ve never unwrapped a package, looked at its contents, and thought to myself, “Gee, I can’t wait to returning this for something of roughly equal value that I actual like!” I’ve never said, “I hope you kept the receipt.” Generally, when I receive a Christmas gift, I say thank you, and I mean it, and if it’s an article of clothing that doesn’t fit, I or the giver exchange it for the same item in the proper size. That’s why the things that we open on Christmas morning are gifts: We didn’t choose them for ourselves; we don’t cherry-pick them; they represent not just our own base desires, but a material expression of how our loved-ones perceive us.

And even if our self-perception and the perception of others don’t align, accepting a gift is a great way to discover new things, and to learn to enjoy what you might not have chosen for yourself. This year, my mother gave me a very generous gift and before I opened it she commented that I might not think I need it. And indeed I don’t. I’m still young enough and fortuitous enough to stand the cold of my apartment without need of an electric heater. My mother intimated that I could take it back if I tried it and found that it didn’t suit me, but I made it clear to her that I would not be doing that, and I acknowledged that it was something I never would have purchased for myself, but that I would use now that I owned it. And despite not being something I’d coveted, it does suit me on some level, as the fake-fire display adds to the aesthetic of my home, and after all, I do need heat, even if I don’t acknowledge it to myself.

The price of the item might have done me better directed elsewhere, or even just kept by my mother, who is financially little better off than I am. But what ever happened to the old cliché, “It’s the thought that counts”? Perhaps we retain that sentiment as an ethic for the giver, but we don’t seem to ever apply it to the receiver. The thought behind each gift has value beyond money, and returning the item is often as good as returning the thought, sending the message, “You thought wrong.”

This is one of those instances in which the etiquette that we learned as children is thrown out the window as we age. Aren’t kids expected to say thank you even to the gifts that they don’t like? Then don’t their parents explain that they need only wear the ugly sweater when the aunt who gave it comes around next year? Are things like that social obligations that we just grow out of over time? Or do we just conveniently forget them after years of building up our material desires?

The four, six, eight and more weeks before Christmas are devoted to mutually gratifying those desires. With Boxing Day now devoted to consumption as well, how many more days need to be added to this shopping spree before the American affection for consumerism reaches a breaking point and starts to cede ground back to the spirit of giving, gratitude, and togetherness?

Santa Claus is Coming to... Wait, He's Here?

As I have a friend who has a modicum of disposable income and I’m sometimes able to afford bus fare, the time I spend with her allows me to go places I would not go on my own, like shopping malls. Of course, I don’t much care for the places, but I’ll take anything that’s outside the realm of my day-to-day experience. Poverty aside, I’m quite an anti-consumerist person, so I wouldn’t buy much even if I could, and I recoil at the insane ravenousness with which some people shop. I actually enjoy going to the mall for the sake of watching the passersby and speculating about their lives, exploring the cultural trends and modern fashions on display in storefronts, and generally observing everything at one step removed. But from time to time, some absurdly over-zealous advertisement or sudden mad dash of customers will tear me violently away from my enjoyment of the scenery and leave me burning with aggravation at the worst of my culture.

It’s the way that corporations and ad agencies and salesmen push us in certain directions, and it’s the way we happily and thoughtlessly run straight in the direction we’re being pushed. Nothing provides a more lasting impression of that than the way in which consumerism manipulates the very passage of the seasons. The calendar seems to run a little differently each year, though the change is unidirectional. And as obvious and discomforting as it is to me, I see no means of stopping it. Indeed, I see no one expressing interest in it stopping.

I went to the local area’s largest mall with my friend over the weekend. I’d hoped that I’d be able to lose myself in the crowd for a while and generally forget about the nature of the place, but about twenty feet from the door, I realized that there was no escaping the consequences of my stubborn non-conformity. For it was about twenty feet from the door that I saw Santa. A little further in, I could make out the Christmas music being piped across the mall concourse, and I tried to override Paul McCartney’s voice, changing the words to “simply having a wonderful nineteenth of November.”

I take it for granted that people are expected to start their Christmas shopping earlier each year, and that they tend to act in accordance with that expectation. It frustrates me to no end, but I take it for granted. When I worked in a wholesale club a few years ago, I was dismayed to see that our Christmas displays went up on September 17^th. This year, I saw autumn displays in a Rite-Aid in early August, and jokingly asked the employee working in that aisle how long it would be before all of that was cleared out to make way for the Christmas merchandise. He replied, “Actually, we got our first shipment this week.”

After Halloween was over, I was in a store that mostly sells seasonal merchandise and I saw that Christmas immediately sprang into full commercial blossom when October ended. I recall commenting that it now seems that from the point of view of retailers, Halloween ends in September and Thanksgiving simply doesn’t happen. How right I was, based on this weekend. And how unfortunate that the stores set the tone for everyone else. Two radio stations in my area began playing Christmas music 24/7 at the end of the first week of November.

I don’t like the emphasis on consumerism attached to all of our traditions. I make no secret of that. But what bugs me on a deeper level is way that this rampant commercialization of everything increasingly threatens to rob people of the actual experience of holidays and distinct seasons. I sometimes imagine that we’re spiraling towards a future in which citizens are constantly preparing for one upcoming holiday or another, but never pause to actually celebrate or enjoy any particular event. Perhaps someday the question “When is Christmas Day?” will be met with a quizzical look and the bemused response, “What are you talking about? Christmas goes from now until Valentines.”

The way I remember it, wasn’t the end of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade always the first appearance of Santa Claus? Weren’t we all supposed to have a collective feeling of warmth at that moment, knowing that the Christmas season began that moment? Even as a child and even living in the suburbs, I had a certain understanding that Thanksgiving marked the turning point at the end of harvest time, when the enjoyment of winter began. Because the parade was televised, all the children in America were able to enjoy the first glimpse of Santa together, and no one was able to lay first claim to the magic of the Christmas season the way they are able to lay first claim to a Blu-Ray player or laptop on Black Friday.

The only reason I can see for why a parent would take a child to see Santa Claus at a mall in the middle of November is out of a sense of opportunism. “Come on, Sally,” I imagine some young mom saying between gulping swills of coffee while holding out her watch, “let’s go see Santa now so we can beat the lines. This way he’ll know exactly what he needs to get when the stores open at eleven o’clock on Thanksgiving. So let’s go plop you on the man’s lap and get this shit over with.”

I think it’s awfully hard for adults to remember that the same things can be seen much differently through the eyes of children. Whereas standing in a line to declare your desires to a bearded fat man in a red suit may seem hellishly monotonous to many parents, for many children, though they may not be aware of it at the time, the prospect of having to wait with other children in order to talk to Santa makes the satisfaction of reaching him all that much more thrilling. And it’s a community experience, subtly reminding both parents and children that every reasonably fortunate family in the country will be getting much of what they want come December 25^th, and that it’s not just a private, one-household glut of loving avarice.

I guess what I’m saying is if we have to define our traditions by orgiastic consumption, can we at least do it in a way that encourages us to recognize that we’re part of a shared society? But make no mistake, I’d rather we tone the consumerism way, way down. I know that it’s unreasonable to expect our consumerist impulses to be overturned. I know that well enough to be okay with hanging out at malls. But I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect us to show capability for valuing something other than consumerism, as well.

Making our purchases and listing our material expectations in a more structured way may give us a chance at integrating the remnants of a few other traditions or experiences into our shopping. But no matter how we go about it, the more we shop, the less attention we’ll pay to the other elements of each season. Amidst the increasing primacy of money, it seems to me that the first thing we stand to lose is the seasonal benchmark of Thanksgiving. And with consumption as the defining characteristic of every celebration that surrounds it, it seems to me that a holiday of gratitude and remembrance is what we can least afford to lose.