As the autumn darkness hits us, we’re also hit by a stream of (I would argue) questionable and very much commercialised holidays. I remember the day when the Christmas gear-up started at the first of Advent, as shops in my town centre revealed the Christmas display in their shop windows. It was of course to encourage us to come inside to shop Christmas presents (and anything else) but it was done in quite an exciting and jolly way (at least for a Christmas loving kid like me). And it felt ok to start this four weeks ahead of Christmas.
But then came the change in retail strategy where Christmas promotion started earlier and earlier, with bigger campaigns and more ads. The back-lash was of course the annual outcry of a general public questioning why the Christmas craze was starting at an earlier date each year. However, I haven’t heard these complaints as much in recent years, not in England (where I was living since 2004) and not in Sweden (where I’ve been living since last year), and my take on it is that Christmas doesn’t come as early anymore because this lead-up time has been filled with a string of new retail occasions.
Take Halloween, that wasn’t even celebrated when I was a kid in Sweden but has just in my lifetime turned Sweden (and many other countries) into American replicas with trick or treating, fancy dress, a lot of sweets, and horror movie styled decorations. The decorations are really not my style so I would never let them enter my house, I don’t have kids, and I don’t like fancy dress, so it’s easy to see why Halloween wouldn’t be on my holidays-I-love list. Also, I much prefer the more traditional holiday of All Saints’ Day (that falls around the same time) where we remember the dead and where the only commercialised aspect would be the candle you buy to put on a loved one’s grave.
The pure consumption ‘holidays’
We’ve literally just come out the other side of Halloween and then we’re hit with a new retail star that is Singles’ Day. I hadn’t heard about this one before and initially thought it was a joke. That single people should, on 11/11, head out and shop to treat themselves because they’re single. I’m of course not against single people, or anyone else for that matter, treating themselves, but why is it that consumption is always seen as the answer to any troubles and by ‘treating ourselves’ we mean ‘buy something’?
Singles’ Day is apparently a Chinese initiative but reached Sweden this year and there were definitely some retailers taking advantage of this by offering discounts and deals. However, the big retail holiday is of course Black Friday that’s coming up later this month. And even though we’re seeing an increase in initiatives against Black Friday and its consumption hype, the Black Friday sales seem to increase and every year is a record-breaking year.
There is of course another layer of complexity on these sales, because for everyone with less money in the bank, they’re rather welcomed and present an opportunity to buy those things you’ve been meaning to buy but just haven’t been able to afford. And from a slow fashion, or conscious consumption, perspective, if there’s something you’ve set your eyes on, that you’ve been trying on and that you’ve been wanting to buy for a long time, then saving some dollars by buying it with a discount wouldn’t be the worst thing.
So what is the real issue here?
The problem is when the campaigns, deals and discounts encourage us to buy all those extra things we don’t actually need.
To put the growth of Black Friday in perspective, we should also consider that Overshoot Day – the day when we’ve used up the planet’s resources for the year – takes place earlier every year. This year it fell as early as on 1 August.
We’ve got the facts about climate change now. We know we need to change, all of us, and one of the most straightforward ways to do so, is to change our consumption patterns. So maybe this holiday season is when we start doing things differently? When we don’t explore all the Black Friday deals just to see what else we could buy. Maybe it’s the season when we look at some of the other initiatives instead, like White Monday that’s growing here in Sweden, where we’re encouraged to buy second hand or use repair services to fix some of our broken items instead of buying new.
Last Sunday wasn’t just Singles’ Day in Sweden, it was also Father’s Day, and we’re told by ads and campaigns that we should show our love and appreciation to our fathers by buying them something. But what if we start questioning this and realise that actually, what our Dad probably really wants is to hang out and spend some time together. That’s what my sister and I did – we took our Dad out to the newly renovated Nationalmuseum in Stockholm and then we had a nice lunch together.
And when we come closer to Christmas, maybe we don’t buy any new decorations this year and instead make the most of the stuff we already have? And maybe we encourage our families to buy less presents, or none at all and instead we treat our loved ones with experiences like a nice meal at a restaurant, a spa visit or a show at a theatre?