The commercialization of Christmas

When someone sniffs about how Christmas has become commercialized these days, I am unimpressed. Gift-giving at Christmas is nothing new. The tradition has pagan origins in the Roman festival of Saturnalia. When Christianity took over, gift-giving continued, albeit at a very modest scale. Even so there were complaints then about how the holiday had become paganized. Once society progressed beyond subsistence farming, the gift-giving became grander. And grander still with the introduction of industrial production, material wealth and leisure time. Commercialization was an inevitable outgrowth. For decades Christmas has been treated as an appropriate venue for the hawking of merchandise, as these advertisements from yore document.

1936 ad

Throat-Scratch? What about throat cancer?

Nothing says love like a vacuum cleaner.

1954 ad

1953 ad

1950 ad

1940 ad

1934 ad

1930s ad

1900s ad

1947 ad

1930s ad

1906 ad

And in case you think crowds at today's shopping malls are a new phenomenon, consider this New Yorker magazine cover from 1948:

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