Many Americans love shopping, especially during the holidays, with its captivating discounts and sales, which lead to uncontrollable splurges on irrelevant things. According to Quindlen, this is an example of America’s crazed consumerism and it is absolutely absurd. In her article, “Honestly, You Shouldn’t Have”, she states that there is currently an assumption that purchasing American merchandises symbolize an act of patriotism and at the same time, build a strong economy. She also states that we, as Americans, need to acknowledge important spiritual values such as friends and family rather than material goods.
According to the “Many stores look at the pros and cons of being open on Thanksgiving Day” It states there are ups and down to being open on a holiday. For example in the text it states “retailers are coming to their senses and realizing it's a family holiday”. This show is that Stephen Lebovitz the president of CBL is closing down 72 of its malls for Thanksgiving because he realized it was a family holiday. Another example from a text is “other stores are closing for Thanksgiving this year after being open for several years”. The statement shows other stores are closed down because of respect of the holiday or economics.
The Civic of Christmas When most people think of Christmastime, they picture Santa Claus, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, The Nutcracker, and snow-covered hills perfect for sledding. At face value, these age-old holiday observances are just ways of celebrating the holiday season, or traditions that have been passed down from generation to generation. However, upon further examination, aspects of the holiday season have had deep-rooted impacts on our society. During the turn-of-the-twentieth-century Progressive Era, practiced rhetoricians took strategic advantage of the opportunity to connect the emotional appeals of the holiday season with the widespread social activism that unfurled across the nation. The landmark
Schor attributes this to the culture American’s live in where spending has no limits, nor self-discipline or advertisers. In this book, the author talks about many factors have led to the overspending, out of them a few that stood out the most to me will be discussed in this paper. The author in the book talks about that people have become greedier over the years. Schor explains that Americans are tightly bound to their personal items as it reflects their personal identity.
Has anyone you know or a friend of yours ever gotten kind of greedy around the holidays so much that you became frustrated or disappointed? Greed can be a pretty annoying thing. It can change your perspective quicker than you will realize. Sometimes it can even cloud judgment or often make you think you are better than other people. The movie and drama of Charles Dickens “A Christmas Story,” are very similar.
I find the waiting a week later to celebrate Christmas to save on after-Christmas deals takes away from Christmas's religious element, but I do find that in their situation, it's
Thanksgiving is a holiday celebrating how the Pilgrims invited the local Native Americans to a harvest feast after a particularly successful growing season. Thanksgiving should be a day of rest and giving thanks. A day to spend time with your family and friends. In conclusion we should all work together to make Thanksgiving that special day of rest and thanks, and change Black Friday to some other day before or after Thanksgiving.
But lately, many people are buying too many products but they really shouldn't be. The author uses strong word choice, expresses voice and gives facts and evidence to state his point. In this article, Carolyn Gregoire expresses her thoughts and articulate her point view. “Americans today, compared to 55 years ago own twice as many cars and eat out twice as much per person, but we don’t seem to be any happier because of it.”
In Anna Quindlen’s essay, Stuff is Not Salvation, she argues that one cannot determine how “better off” they are, by the amount of belongings they possess. Quindlen states that Americans have, “an addiction to consumption, so out of control that it qualifies as a sickness.” However, she is not just referring to an addiction to buying meaningless items, but the idea that people are purchasing items when they have no money. Quindlen validates her argument with the tragedy of a walmart employee that as trampled to death on Black Friday, and the concept that many people have lost their sense of appreciation and gratefulness. She also argues that there are indeed things we need, however, a large majority of people’s perception of want and need are obscured.
One of the most beautiful aspects of humanity is how different every being is. As individuals, people are made up of thoughts, actions, and behaviors that are unique only to them, yet how accurate is this? As much as society wants us to be one of a kind, strangely enough, there is something quite frivolous that unites humanity as one: shopping. In the “The Science of Shopping,” Malcolm Gladwell, a staff writer for the New Yorker, proves just exactly how predictable humans are when in the prowl for different objects to buy. Through the help of the coined retail anthropologist Paco Underhill, even the minute details of consumer shopping behavior have been studied, so much so that a system and design in which a store could garner the most income has been created.
Commentary Essay on Shopping and Other Spiritual Adventures in America Today The American people are focusing more on materialistic items, people are shopping for pleasure more than necessity. This article comments on how people are shopping to release stress or to gain pleasure. Even though the article was written in 1984, it is still pertinent to modern time. In Shopping and Other Spiritual Adventures in America Today by Phyllis Rose, varied sentence length, different point of views, and anaphora are utilized to prove that society is becoming consumed in materialism.
As studied by Janet Siskind, the American Thanksgiving celebration is actually a very detailed ritual that contains many symbols. Similar to other rituals, the holiday reinforces certain social structures and “…reaffirms values and assumptions about cultural and social unity, about identity and history, about inclusion and exclusion” (168). The Thanksgiving ritual is centered around a return home, as people traveled from their urban homes back to their rural home to meet with their larger family. As a result, “the household became the site of ritual performance…” (175). The goal of the Thanksgiving ritual was to reaffirm the family and renew traditional ties, especially as more people had started moving into the cities around the time that the holiday became popular in the United States (176).
I believe that Christmas is too commercialized. People start Black Friday before Thanksgiving is even over, which is ridiculous. Three reasons that Christmas is too commercialized are the following: People start selling decorations before Halloween, Black Friday begins at the end of Thanksgiving, and Christmas doesn't mean what it used to. Many people make Christmas seem like it's about the presents, buts it's not. It's about family.
An articulation of appreciates to survival. Through the hundreds years, families had added their traditions to the Thanksgiving festival to protecting the most valuable. When the people are being together to celebrate one common purpose, it let people gather in unity to refreshing and invigorating. It is a time of healing and reconciliation from conflict. It is not just share our victories and struggles, however we find strength and hope.
Everybody looks forward to holidays—spanning from Christmas, the jolly time of year when the world nostalgically envisions snow descending upon the fallow earth, to Halloween, the tenebrous time where people delight in costumes and impetuously chanting, “Trick or treat!” But, does the thought ever cross our minds: “how did these holidays come about?” or, “why do we celebrate this day?” Although research shows that many of the festivals include Puritan traditions, over time they fell victim to corrupt, pagan practices,—ranging from the cute but misguided efforts of Easter to the nefarious elements of Halloween. Do reasons to still feel joyful and happy when the holidays come around remain? I believe so, but only with caution and a greater
