As I sit here reflecting on this past Christmas, the Holiday season, the days leading up to Christmas, family, friends, and our society, I also reflect on the past year, the mistakes, the accomplishments, the good, the bad, and the ugly. I am reminded that the culture industry of Christmas is a machine that gets going long before December 25th. I am also reminded that Christmas, at least here in the States, has taken on a commercial form that is trumped by little to nothing. I am even further reminded that the culture industry of Christmas has globalized itself and turned a Holiday that is supposed to be about a spiritual connection to Christ, family, religious traditions, humanity, and people in general more into cultural mores focused around buying, spending money we don’t have, getting that “good deal,” consuming products we don’t need, and waking up at ungodly hours to get a toaster oven for $4. 99. Are we all consumed with just buying as a society? Where did the spirituality go? Yes, I’m sure that the praise and worship music blared through the speakers at Wal Mart gets us in the “mood” for Christmas and the blatant manger scenes at our local churches give us reflection on the “reason for the season.” I’m also sure that the once-a-year- giving spirit causes us to feel good about ourselves when we acknowledge the homeless person on the corner and give her/ him a couple of dollars because “Jesus would have done so.”

Now, am I some pessimistic, narcissist who hates the Holiday season? No. Of course not. But our society has turned the Christmas season into quite the buying frenzy followed with the guilt-ridden mantra of having to lose all that weight and get out of debt in the New Year, which most fail after the first 30 days anyways. I love the Christmas season. It gives my family and I time to reflect, connect, and prepare for the New Year ahead. It is also a time to see friends and get that “cozy” feeling that we have all come to love around this time of year. No, no, I love this season. But, I’m troubled when I see fights, people getting trampled, cars getting scratched, and even people getting shot over the tickle me Elmo doll—or whatever “must have gift” craze is dominating the buying frenzy that year.

This year we didn’t really do gifts. My wife and I bought a tree, decorated it, and Mahalia was happy with the boxes and fuzz that came in the boxes. Before you go and feel sorry for us or judge us for not celebrating Christmas “the right way” with our little one, let me tell you: this year we were really forced to “trim down” our spending—like so many other Americans in this economic recession. Money has not been our friend this year and work is even harder to come by—thus, no gifts. However, what it forced us to do was to refocus back on the real “reason for the season”: Christ, family, friends, good times, and memories that will last a lifetime. And guess what, it was really good!

Not having money was a real worldview shifter and gave us some perspective on where our priorities really lie. It also helped us to enjoy each other as people and to reflect on what Christ has done in our lives over the last year. This doesn’t mean I’m hating on anyone who went out and got that 60 inch plasma with the Bose sound system—no, no. Go on with ya bad self. Hell, I can’t lie and say I don’t want that at some level. But in the end, we came to realize just what the culture industry of Christmas has done to our own perception and social understanding of this Holiday season.

The great social critic and philosopher Theodor Adorno defined a culture industry that, “…involves the production of works for the reproduction and mass consumption, thereby organizing ‘free’ time, the remnant domain of freedom under capital in accordance with the same principles of exchange and equivalence that reign in the sphere of production outside leisure, presents culture as the realization of the right of all to the gratification of desire while in reality continuing the negative integration of society” (The Culture Industry [1991: Blackwell Publishing] p.4). Adorno was concerned with looking at how hyper-consumption actually degraded us and turned us into blind consumers with a focused groupthink only to buy and consume for sole gratification. Adorno had it right in many ways, he asserted that “under capitalism all production is for the market; goods are produced not in order to meet human needs and desires, but for the sake of profit, for the sake of acquiring further capital” (The Culture Industry pp.5-6).

We have, in essence, a capitalistic market that operates, as Naomi Klein has reminded us (Anti Globalist and author of No Logo), as a crack addict, seeking its next hit and feeding. No other “season” demonstrates this better than the Christmas season here in the States. Moreover, with more U.S. citizens going into debt and living beyond their means, what does this mean for our future? Does this make us venerable to a different type of “terrorist” attack?

The culture industry of Christmas gets to me. It really didn’t hit me until my economic back was pressed against the wall this year. Our little girl was fine this Christmas year; she never knew the difference; she had one of the best Christmas’ ever with grandma in town. My wife had a great time as her and I had a chance to catch up on the year, our life, our marriage, and where we go in the New Year. It was great because I didn’t have to fight crowds, look for the “best parking spot” at the mall, and I spent time with the family and with good friends. Can this keep up every year though? What will happen once we do get some capital and income? I don’t know. But I do know that I want to continue this trend and focus less on the pure consumption of material just for the sake of consumption.

Because as Adorno posits, “The mass culture…absorbs the truth content and expends itself in the material but all it has left as material is itself” (The Culture Industry p. 65).