Easter came and went on April 5th, and I’m certain I’m not the only person who felt vaguely underwhelmed by the entire proceeding. The stores had their displays, and the churches had their signs, but the actual day of Easter came and went without any particular fanfare, barely being noticed in the endless stream of one day into the next.
At first I just attributed this to the world’s general sense of existential dread, what with the President of the United States using Easter Morning to demand that Iran open the Strait of Hormuz or else they would be “living in hell.” However, it’s not just Easter that’s felt off lately; most holidays have lost their luster. It’s rare that I get excited for an actual holiday tradition at this point, whether it’s New Years’ Eve fireworks, birthday cards, or the Thanksgiving Day parade, and on further inspection, that lack of joy stems from the hyper-materialization of holidays.
Consider, for a moment, the following celebration. People spend money on gifts of some form or another; they spend money on special themed candy or snacks; they spend money on selecting a message from a generic pile of themed and printed cards; they spend money on overly specialized home decor which is only ever out for a couple weeks of the year; they spend, they spend, and they spend. I hope everyone agrees that this is less an authentic celebration and more an opportunity to push everyone to buy things they don’t need.
Why is it, then, that most holiday celebrations in the 21st century are increasingly resembling that description? Whether it be Christmas, Halloween, Valentine’s Day, Easter, July 4th, or even family milestones like birthdays, celebrations have become flat and vapid. We no longer emphasize the opportunity to be with rarely seen family and friends or have a unique celebration that makes each holiday meaningful. Instead, we gather in search of the greatest spending: The finest candies, nicest seasonal decor, and prettiest bits of cardstock filled with board-approved platitudes and one-liners. None of those things were made by us or have any clear value besides the money spent on them, and the holiday spirit gets diluted by every egg-shaped paper plate or inflatable yard Santa.
This rampant materialism in place of actual celebration is bad enough, but there’s a second problem that needs to be addressed: Advertising and brand exploitation. Nearly every major event in the world has wound up with a big old brand slapped across its face, from the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade to Coca-Cola’s AI Christmas ads to the tech companies sponsoring the White House Easter Egg Roll. It’s hard to feel genuine about a celebration or community event when the speakers are namedropping corporations and every celebratory item has paid-for logos plastered on.
Beyond the incessant advertising, companies also needlessly transform their purportedly universal products during the holiday season just so they can sell new and exclusive variants. This can come either through special holiday promotions, like the annual Happy Honda Days in November and December, or through unique product variants. Candy companies are by far the worst offenders in this latter category; just by way of example, PEEPS has over 40 different variants, most of which are themed around particular holidays (Pumpkins and ghosts for Halloween, trees for Christmas, rabbits for Easter, and more). When every holiday is an excuse for Hershey’s to generate a new shape of Reese’s Peanut Butter trees/hearts/eggs/pumpkins, it’s hard to get excited about any one of them.
Unfortunately, the cat is well and truly out of the bag when it comes to corporate involvement and materialism in holidays. The solution, then, is not to somehow ban corporations, but to instead de-monetize and re-personalize holidays. If global-scale traditions are no longer holding value, create new personal traditions. Rather than buying a pile of plastic decor or a pack of holiday cupcakes, consider learning to make a dessert that can become a new family favorite, or involving guests in custom-making decorations. Centering personal joy and connection over sponsored corporate slop will take more effort, but it might just restore a little of the luster that capitalism has drained away.