Prepare the vocabulary for the translation of the following article.
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2. The Commercial Takeover of Christmas
The most sceptical view of modern Christmas is that the fads, decorations,
festive goods and all the paraphernalia are a commercial scam to make us spend
money on over-priced useless goods. However true this is, it has also become a
secular social festival much akin to the American thanksgiving. Families come
together at Christmas even if they do not for the rest of the year. It probably
helps that Christmas and New Year's celebrations have become institutionally
intertwined. These make Christmas in essence a meaningful family celebration,
even if on top of that there is a thick cover of shallow commercialism.
The festivities are largely led by commerce and retail outlets: The relevant
decorations, cards, food and goods are all marketed for Christmas, and it is the
High Streets that press Christmas upon the populace way before the populace
itself is ready. It is a frequent complaint that stores start Christmas "too
early" and too aggressively. Several elements of Christmas are the invention
purely of commercial advertisements.
2.1. The Origin of Christmas Cards
Take the example of the commercial invention of the Christmas card; with
corporate effort, these would have remained an expensive privilege of the rich.
“The Christmas card represented a convenient and sophisticated evolution of the
ancient custom of giving blessings or good wishes for the New Year. By 1840 it
was often carried on among the wealthier classes by sending a short poem
engraved within an ornamental framework. [...] This, and some imitations, proved
to be commercial failures because they were too expensive. In 1862, therefore, a
fresh start was made by the stationers Messrs Charles Goodall, which printed
cheap plain greetings. By the end of the decade they were becoming decorated,
and other firms were producing them. [...] In 1878 the volume sent was
sufficient for the Post Office to commence a separate record of Christmas mail,
and in the 1890s the cards became a popular craze, and continued to expand their
market over the next century. In 1992 1,560 million were sent, and the
commercial value of the Christmas card trade was £250 million.”
"The Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain"
Ronald Hutton (1996)7
2.2. Father Christmas, Santa Claus: The Personification of Christmas
The human figurehead of the festive season is a modern creation; before the
seventeenth century such a figure has no history.
“Nobody seems to have thought of personifying Christmas until the early
seventeenth century. It was done then partly because of the general taste of the
age for allegory and partly because the criticism of observation of the feast by
radical Protestants made a representation of it convenient to writers determined
to defend it. Thus in 1616 Ben Jonson introduced to the world, Christmas His
Masque, presented a figure 'in a round hose, long stockings, a close doublet, a
high-crowned hat with a brooch, a long thin beard, a truncheon, little ruffs,
white shoes, his scarfs, and garters tied cross.' [...] Over the next 250 years
this sort of character was to feature repeatedly in pictures, stage plays, and
folk-drama, known variously as Sir Christmas, Lord Christmas, or (increasingly)
as Father Christmas. He was essentially concerned with the adult world,
personifying feasting and games, he had no connection with presents, and he was
not treated with much respect, being generally a burlesque figure of fun. Then
Santa Claus turned up. In origins he was, of course, the medieval patron of
children, St Nicholas, who remained a favourite popular figure amongst the
Dutch.”
"The Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain"
Ronald Hutton (1996)8
This figure gradually moved from St Nicholas Eve to Christmas Eve.
“In 1809 Washington Irving, whose sentimental interest in traditional
Christmases has been mentioned, drew attention to the old tradition in his
Knickerbocker's History of New York, rescheduling it from St Nicholas's Eve to
Christmas Eve. Irving's portrait was repeated in an 1821 issue of the Children's
Friend, published in the same city, and that may have been the direct
inspiration to another New Yorker, Clement Clark Moore, to create the modern
Santa. [...] His saint was not the traditional, sentimental, figure of the
Dutch, but a magical sprit of the northern midwinter. He wore fur cloths, had a
bushy white beard, traveled through the sky merrily in a sleigh drawn by
reindeer, and came down chimneys with a sack of gifts. [...] Soon after 1863, he
was frequently depicted wearing a red suit, trimmed with white fur.”
"The Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain"
Ronald Hutton (1996)7
From 1931, Haddon Sundblom the illustrator for Coca Cola "drew a series of Santa
images in their Christmas advertisements until 1964"9, which is where the
tradition of a Santa Claus wearing red comes from. The colours red and green had
always been prominent in Christmas card greetings, however.
2.3. Commercial Christmas
Prominent elements of Christmas are commercial inventions, from Father Christmas
(and his suit) to Christmas Cards. The history of commercialist Christmas is
older still than those creations. From the 1870s onwards, The Times broadsheet
could be relied upon to attack the commercialism of Christmas10. Clearly, its
commercialisation has not destroyed it and since the nineteenth century, it has
become even more popular than ever.
To remove the commercial aspects of Christmas would be largely to destroy it;
religious activists would create in its place a series of
historically-challenged myths and break it into a sectarian event. Without
commercialism the general populace, Protestant Christians, secularists and
evangelical Christians would all cease to have anything in common during the
festive season.
http://www.humanreligions.info/christmas.html#General