The tree is up, the lights are on and the presents are probably wrapped. Only two more sleeps until the day when sacred family oriented togetherness merges with ruthless consumer culture, or as it's more commonly known, Christmas. So in this episode we're going to dive into the murky, tinsel covered contradiction of the holiday season. As I ask, is capitalism killing Christmas? Welcome to America, a history podcast. I'm Liam Heffernan and every week we answer a different question to understand the people, the places and the events that make the USA what it is today. To discuss this, I am joined once again by Thomas Rees Smith, professor of American Literature and Culture and Deputy Director of Area Studies at the University University of East Anglia. His new book, Searching for Santa, an anthology of the poem, stories and illustrations that shaped an American icon, is available to buy right now. So we'll pop a link in the show notes for that. Hello, Tom.

Hi, Liam. Great to see you again. Merry Christmas.

You too. You too. And as is tradition, the Father Christmas of America, A history returns for his annual appearance. He doesn't need cookies, just a microphone and some holiday spirit. He's also the creator and host of the excellent podcast Christmas Past. A very merry welcome back to Brian.

L. Well, thank you very much. Happy to be here.

Always a pleasure having you on. And I feel like we always get a bit downbeat with the subjects that we get you on here for. So we're gonna have to do something a bit. A bit jollier next year, I think.

Yeah, you might be right about that.

I think we're always upbeat. It's Hughes. Downbeat, Liam.

I think it is. Yeah, I dragged the mood down. Yeah. Mr. Scrooge. Right. We've talked about Christmas a lot before and like the history and the traditions of Christmas. So anyone listening, just check out the episodes we've done the last couple of years on that. But, Tom, remind us, you know what, what did Christmas in America look like before the age of mass consumerism?

Great question. To some extent, that would depend where you were in America. Certainly famously in, in the northern parts of America, New England particularly there was still, for significant period of time into the 19th century, something of a religiously based resistance to Christmas. So the Puritans, as in this country, who were, you know, significant leaders in, in certain parts of New England, essentially banned the celebration of Christmas. And because America didn't have the Restoration that we did, that antipathy to Christmas arguably lasted longer in America than it did in Britain. So obviously when the Restoration took place, Christmas was one of the things that made a comeback into British culture. Not quite as fulsomely, perhaps, as in its medieval heyday, but nonetheless, you know, celebrating Christmas did become a part of life again, Whereas in America, yeah, it took longer for that Puritan resistance to the season, to seasonal celebration, to fade. It lingered. And I suppose that would be one of the interesting dimensions of what we talk about today. Because why didn't the Puritans like Christmas? Well, there were a number of reasons, some theological, but also because it was a time when people ate too much, drank too much, partied too hard, and generally behaved in a way that seemed pretty ungodly. You know, that's. That's what a good Christmas celebration looked like in the 17th century when the Puritans were busy banning it. So you could say that the Puritans kind of succeeded in banishing commercialism from Christmas, at least for a certain time period, but they did that by banishing Christmas. And it was only once commercialism came back into the season that Christmas really actually started to make inroads into, into American life. Down south, things were different. There was perhaps a bit more of a kind of old world tradition in the way that Christmas was kept in ways that reached back to kind of traditions in the old world. But there, of course, the whole thing was deeply compromised and complicated by the all encompassing issue of slavery. So, you know, how do we take commercialism out of that as a concept? So, yeah, regional variation before the 19th century, but already, I think, tensions around the issue of what it means to celebrate Christmas in America and what commercialism means in relation to those celebrations.

It's interesting though that, you know, you mentioned sort of slavery, you know, in the South. I mean, you can't really avoid that. We're talking about that time, but particularly, you know, Christmas in that part of the country was used as an opportunity to give slaves a certain degree of extra freedom to maybe act out, have a little bit more fun, because it was seen as an opportunity to, you know, keep them in line, I guess slaveholders thought, give them an opportunity, you know, at this time of year, and then the rest of the year maybe they'll, they'll, you know, comply. So actually there's always been that link, hasn't there, between Christmas being a time for excess and celebration?

Yes. And I think, you know, if you ask, look at someone the way that someone like Frederick Douglass interprets that, you know, I think he would have seen that as a kind of almost coercive. Coercive celebration. Right. That. That the enslaved were in a sense, made to Celebrate in certain ways to. To excess in some points, as Douglas would say, to, in a sense, convince them that freedom was. Wasn't all it was cracked up to be, to give them a simulation of freedom, which was itself another form of kind of coercion, basically. So. Yeah, so that. That's. That's certainly a complicated issue in relation to American Christmas history.

Yeah. Well, there we go. Nice downbeat topic for next year. But, Brian, I wonder if, you know, before advertising agencies got involved and department stores got involved, were there any kind of sort of symbols or icons or things that sort of defined the American Christmas?

I mean, I think, again, I would go back to what Tom said, that it really depends on where you were and at what part of American history you were. Like, out in the west, we weren't really seeing as much as people were moving West. It took quite a while for that to take hold. We saw it mostly in the Northeast and the south, and again, things tend to be very, very regionalized. So in New York, the symbol of St. Nicholas was very instrumental in shaping Christmas and the New York culture that the Dutch brought in the South. That's where I've done less studies. So I don't really. Couldn't really say in terms of what those signifiers would have looked like. Yeah, the one that's really standing out the most strongly is St. Nicholas. And we talked about this last time, I believe, where There was the St. Nicholas Society of New York, there was the St. Nicholas Bank. In my latest book, I actually have images from the American Numismatic Society where before the Federal Reserve issued its own paper money, banks would issue their own banknotes, and St. Nicholas was actually a figure on no fewer than 12 banks. Was just all throughout the year, you would have a $5 note with an image of St. Nicholas on it. So certainly we see a lot of those kinds of things and even some of the earlier traditions of St Nicholas and the Christkindle or the Christ child would go around together on Christmas delivering gifts, or the chriskindle would do it, him or herself. We don't really know if the Chriskindle, we don't know the gender of that figure, but seems to often be portrayed as sort of like a young boy or girl.

I mean, it seems like there's always been an element or a sort of thread of consumerism in the idea of Christmas. But at what point did that really start to sort of dominate the holidays, do you think?

Well, Certainly in the 19th century, we see, like a bunch of things happening at the same time. Right. We have an increase of industrialism, which brings with it a changing economy. More things, more of the idea of things being made in factories, shipped to stores and bought. Right. In America, we're moving from a period where one out of every three people were farmers and just sort of living that way versus moving to cities and buying things from stores. We have mass transportation and we have an explosion in print media. All of that stuff happening at the same time where we start transforming into more of a consumer culture. So that was mid 19th century, at least here in America. Might have been earlier in England.

And Tom, I think we've talked about this before to some extent, but the 1800s and sort of the industrialization of everything, you know, and how that meant that, you know, literature and news could be like, disseminated and distributed so rapidly. That must have been a huge factor in homogenizing our idea of Christmas.

Yes, people would, would have encountered traditions which they would have then incorporated into their own, into their own celebrations, many of which, you know, relied on consuming something or other. As Brian said, you can kind of tick them off as you go through the century. I mean, early the 19th century, one of the first signs of a growing Christmas consumer economy is a special Christmas edition of books which are given as gifts. As we've said, you have the spread of Santa Claus, which of course requires a certain amount of shopping to be done generally, unless you're hand making everything which you know, is possible. I guess Christmas trees enter the Picture in the 1830s, 1840s, store bought Christmas decorations as early as the 1850s probably. And then of course, in the years just after the Civil War, really, you get the department store developing as a. As a force in American consumers lives which, you know, early on develop a strong relationship with Christmas and Santa and a certain seasonal shopping behavior that becomes swiftly ingrained in everyday life.

And Brian, you know, when I know we've sort of, kind of touched on the sort of the tenuously religious roots of Christmas before, but I think it's always been considered a religious holiday. And when do you think that people started buying into the idea of Christmas for the sort of the consumerism and the retail as well as just the religion? Yeah.

When people say, has Christmas become more commercial? My response to that is always, well, of course, because we have become more commercial, every aspect of our life has become, at least in one way or another, connected with our identity and the necessity of our life as consumers. So when it comes to Christmas, of course that would eventually become. There would be a consumer element to it. Now, again, we see in the 19th century that explosion of print media did a couple of things. Number one, it allowed, and this is the topic of Tom's new book, all the literature that would shape our understanding of Santa Claus. But also it gave an avenue for retailers to advertise their wares and really ingrain in our psyches the idea, and on a daily basis at that, with daily newspapers, that this is a commercial holiday. I did an episode of my podcast, I believe it was two seasons ago, about this notion of what we call Christmas creep. I don't know if there's a different name for that elsewhere in the world about how the perception that Christmas just keeps coming earlier and earlier every year, but we've been having that argument for over a hundred years. And some quick math would tell you that if it were really true that Christmas were coming earlier every year, I eventually we'll circle back on ourselves and it would be perpetual Christmas, which hasn't happened yet, of course. So it really is only that perception. So I did, in the episode, started reading this advertisement from a newspaper saying, oh, shop early and make sure you get into the stores before the rush. And then the big reveal was that this was a newspaper article from 1840, and it was an article that came out in mid October. So this idea of Christmas and retail being intertwined isn't really a perversion of Christmas as much as a perversion of just our lives in general. When our lives tended to become more consumer based, then of course, Christmas would take that on as well, just like everything else did.

I mean, if you think back to the Nativity story, we've got people bringing gifts then, right? So arguably the wise men had to do a bit of shopping before they turned up. So they had to do their Christmas shopping early. They had to plan ahead. But yeah, I think in a sense it's almost impossible to ask the question, because if you're asking, can we go back to a point where Christmas was absent commercialism, then it's not going to look anything like a Christmas that any of us will ever have experienced. Right. The Christmas that we celebrate now is absolutely the product of two centuries worth of a very interesting and close relationship between Christmas commercialism and religion to some degree. So what we have as our Christmases now, I mean, you'd have to cancel Christmas in a sense to take consumerism out of it, because they fully develop as part and parcel of a consumerist ritual, essentially.

I guess that's where these themes of, you know, industrialization and kind of homogenization of Christmas kind of all tie in. Because actually at the point that there was a more cohesive national understanding of what Christmas is, that's the point at which advertisers and retailers and, you know, the media could, could scale up that consumerism because it's so much easier to sell one idea to the whole country than it is to sell 50 to every state. Right?

Yeah, I mean, I think that's exactly right. And you see that happen very, very quickly. Especially I think it was around the mid to late 19th century where the number of daily newspapers increased by something like five fold in just a period of a decade or so. And you have to think before all of that, this is also happening at the time when mass transit, trains and all that are coming into their own. And so before all of that, people and news and ideas did not travel very far or very quickly. And then within the span of a decade, you had the ability for that to happen instantly and dramatically. And so we see this dramatic transformation. And again, this coincides with the building out of New York, large retailers like Woolworths and Wanamakers that really innovated, you know, the department store shopping model and also what has been referred to as the cathedral shopping model, Wanamakers especially. You walk into the front lobby and it was modeled after a cathedral with high ceilings and windows that let in all this light. It was supposed to create that same feeling that you get when you walked into, like Notre Dame, for example, except you were there to do something quite a bit different. But it really, really helped solidify that.

And Water Makers, I think, had quite strong connections to the kind of evangelical movements. So that was not coincidental, as you say. Brian, was it? And I think they also went quite big on their window displays in a way that showcased religious themes as well. So you can't kind of pick apart the strands of the sacred and the secular in the way all this develops. You can't think of religion as being antithetical to consumerism because, you know, they, they, they absolutely develop hand in hand. And actually it's in a sense, consumerism that you could argue helps put religion back into Christmas because, you know, it isn't, it isn't a huge religious festival in many parts of America still at the beginning of the 19th century. And the sacred elements of it are much more to the fore by the time you get to the end of the 19th century with the growth of consumerism and capitalism around Christmas time, than it is at the beginning. So we can't think that this is consumerism replacing religion at Christmas Time we have to see them kind of developing hand in hand.

Yeah, but is there not a question of ethics here when retailers start exploiting religious sentiment in order to make a quick buck?

That's an interesting question, because I'm not sure the pivot is that we went from it being a very religious holiday to a strictly consumer holiday. That's actually a theme I explore in my new book of Christmas is long, long ago, where I think people have this sense that in the past, Christmas was a much more religious celebration. Advent was for sure. That was a time of prayerful preparation. But the whole idea is that once we get past that vigil of Christmas Eve, that's when you cast off all of that self restraint that's been festering for over a month. And you would go into these 12 days of Christmas where things could get a little rowdy and loud and drunken and all of that. And I think nowadays, especially depending on which end of the spectrum you are politically, you sort of have this idea that we need to get back to that time when Christmas was more pious and all that. Part of the reason that the Puritans wanted to ban it is because of what they were seeing. There was one Increase Mather was a Puritan who went on to become the president of Harvard, who wrote this big tract about how the Christmas season was referred to as mensis genialis, or the voluptuous month. And, and was writing about how, you know, that's when more murders would take place and that's where prostitution was at its all time highest. So we did not pivot from it being this solemn religious keeping Jesus as the reason for the season. I think that's a fantasy of a time gone by. Yeah, I don't believe that that was the actual pivot. I think we saw this slow march toward consumerism in everyday life. And of course it affected Christmas too.

Yeah. And ironically put the Christ back into Christmas far more than it ever had been. Yeah. So if you, if you say that consumerism is exploiting religion, I mean, you could argue that on some level religion is also exploiting consumerism, in fact, to actually amplify the Christmas story in its Christian sense.

Yeah. I mean, I guess there's mutual benefit. Right. In that sense. But I remember a few years ago, and I think it's repeated every year on TV. We have this like these like, listicle programs on TV that are like the 50 greatest something or other. And every Christmas there's this countdown of the greatest Christmas TV ads. And I just, I think that's quite Remarkable that we end up watching a TV program about the adverts and then complain when there's an ad break in the middle of this TV program, which is just a bunch of adverts. But I think it also shows just, you know, how influential advertising really is at Christmas now. Because certainly in the uk, the John Lewis department store, the release of their Christmas ad is an event. And I just. I wonder, have advertising agencies got too much control over the holidays now?

Christmas ads in England are just. They're not like that in America at all. Our equivalent of that is the Super Bowl. Everyone tunes in to see what the advertisements will look like. You know, as I understand it in the uk, like, the songs that accompany the Christmas ads tend to go on to become, you know, they chart and all that. We don't have that phenomenon here, and I'm not sure we ever did, maybe the announcement of doorbuster sales in the mid-2000s. But there are plenty of YouTube videos that are compilations of Christmas ads from the 70s and 80s, the ones that I grew up with. So I tend to go to those, I suppose.

Yeah, they play into nostalgia after a certain point, don't they? Yeah, you know, they. They become a part of our lived experience of it.

It is interesting to me, though, that, you know, the US is, I think, typically does everything a bit bigger and a bit grander than we like to do in the uk, and yet when it comes to Christmas, it's not the case. Maybe it's a bit of fatigue from Thanksgiving or something. I don't know. It could be.

I'm always surprised at the things that we leave out. We don't have Boxing Day here. Imagine the idea of a day off to eat leftovers. It sounds very American, but we don't do it. And we leave out a lot of British traditions like the pudding and Christmas crackers, et cetera. And, yeah, it's easy to make the case that it is just about getting money out of your pocket and into somebody else's, because the consumerism, and I think it's, you know, rears its head or becomes the most apparent when it's. People are buying those. Those gift cards that you see at the kiosks, and it's just commerce. It's like, let me turn this $10 into a different kind of $10 and give it to you, and then you'll give me something that's very, very similar in kind. So, yeah, I think that form of consumerism is what's ruining Christmas, if any kind of consumerism is.

And Tom we spoke with Vaughan recently about the sort of socioeconomic divisions that Christmas can sometimes fuel. And I do think when we talk about the impact of advertising, it can accentuate that divide. Because when Christmas becomes about gift giving, even if it's sold in the most innocent of ways, there are people out there who are, who can't afford to give gifts. And so when your, your kindness is, is being literally quantified in the amount of gifts you're giving people, that, that can have a really negative effect on some, surely.

Oh, I'm sure, absolutely, yes, I mean that. But I guess that's also because this is, you know, the product of a, of a capitalist society that, that runs on those kind of socioeconomic differences. Ultimately, I guess the argument against, well, not the argument against that, but a mitigating factor might be that built into the consumerist idea of Christmas has always been the concept of charity as well. That in a sense, very early on, that kind of consumerism and those kind of issues that you just raised have been weaponized in a sense to encourage charitable acts at Christmas time. Whether that's acts of giving or acts of service of one form or another, it's kind of baked into the consumerist idea of Christmas. The idea that actually you should also be given to others. Now how many people do that in their Christmas rituals? I bet more than, more than we might imagine sometimes. Certainly, you know, people will be doing things to help others around Christmas time, have no doubt in a way that they might not do the rest of the year. So I guess in some senses that is the, the ethical flip side of it, that undoubtedly it highlights those socio economic inequalities, but perhaps also because it shines a light on them and puts them in such a kind of stu park spotlight. You know, many of the classic Christmas stories we have are precisely about those who have realizing they should share with those who don't. And you could argue there's not really another time of year where we kind of devote a lot of our Christmas media to that kind of concept. Whether or not it, it actually, you know, sticks always, you know, nonetheless it is there. It's certainly, I think, an inescapable part of, of Christmas Christmas popular culture.

I also think that, yes, like I agree with you, but then when you look at things like, you know, A Christmas Carol and because that's the most famous example, generally these stories are told through the perspective of those who have the money and have the choice to change. If it was Tiny Tim's story, it would be a much bleaker story. And yet that is an American Christmas for families in that situation. Right?

Yeah, I think that's a. It's an interesting take on A Christmas Carol. And I think Dickens was trying to do a lot more to talk about capitalism and income inequality and working conditions. There was a reason that Cratchit worked in a counting house during the time that was known to be a particularly bleak place to work. But yeah, you're right, I never quite thought about it that way before, that it's always the person who has the option to give, who refuses the call and then learns why that would be a good idea.

It's a bit more palatable when Christmas is presented in such a way that we can choose to celebrate it or not. And I think that can be quite exclusive of those who maybe don't have that choice. And is that where maybe those who kind of control that messaging, like the ad companies and the retailers, maybe are fueling that exclusivity of Christmas.

We also have that great story of the Gift of the Magi where we had two people who didn't have the means to give one another a gift, and so they each made sacrifices and in turn that strengthened their relationship and reaffirmed their love for one another. So we could make the argument both ways, I suppose. But yeah, I think you're right. I mean, it's very. I've been at different parts of my life, someone who would struggle to be able to afford the kind of Christmas that I thought most Americans wanted to have. And like, you feel it for sure because for six weeks straight you're just blasted with images that this is what you should be doing, this is what you want, this is what you want others to do for you. And when you can't do it, it's. You feel it.

That's also generated some kind of nicely subversive moments of popular culture. A couple of years ago I put together a collection of Christmas stories by a writer called Mary Wilkins Freeman, who is enormously popular short story writer and, you know, more than. More than one of her stories in a sense revolves around people taking mass into their own hands and committing acts of theft, if you like, of one form or another, we might say of. To liberate themselves the Christmas that they. That they think they should have in ways that play out with various degrees of success or otherwise. So, you know, maybe the subversive attitude towards, towards those kind of inequities is also part of the Christmas spirit. I mean, if we think of, you know, there is still something in the idea of, of, of Santa and Christmas that is framed around a selfless giving. And, you know, if we don't live up to that, then at least, you know, it is there as a, as a possibility. Is there as a model, it is there as a guide. So, and it, you know, again, that's an unusual thing for us to devote our popular culture to.

And actually, I wonder, you know, when we, when we look, you know, historically and, and we can even look in the last few years, you know, we've had things like, you know, economic, you know, hardships around the world. You know, things like Covid also has put physical distance between people being able to celebrate in the same room. Cost of living crises where people, you know, simply have less money to spend. Do you think that, you know, when we go through waves like this, that it, sometimes it, it helps people to maybe resist some of those more consumerist ideas behind Christmas or seek other ways to enjoy Christmas?

The short answer is no. We saw this during the Great Depression. There is a whole class of gifts known as, like either gimcracks or gym cracks, I don't know, but cheap, gaudy kind of gifts that people would give to one another. We saw this during the Great recession in the mid-2000s. I think we're going to see it again this year. I'm already reading all the stories about how tariffs are going to affect the cost of everything during times of economic hardship or things like a pandemic. We don't do less of the consumerism. We just consume different kinds of things. Consumerism will find a way, right? It's nature's law. It's just that it depends on that we will consume different kinds of things or in lower amounts. I think there has been a movement to be less consumer around Christmas. There's been the beginnings of that, but the problem is it's been in the beginning stages for decades and decades. It's not getting it off the ground. It's not going anywhere. I believe it's just here to stay and it's just a matter of degrees from here on in.

There is an argument though, that younger generations now like Gen Z, they're, they're far more environmentally conscious and some of their values do directly conflict with the high consumerism that tends to dominate the holidays. And I do wonder if that is potentially going to be the shift that makes Christmas a bit less. I don't know what it is.

I think we've been hearing for decades about how millennials are. They were different in this way or in that way, and they value experiences more than they value possessions. But the data are not showing any changes in retail habits around Christmas. So maybe it's the boomers who are keeping everything afloat, and we'll see a grand change in the decades to come. I'll believe it when I see it.

I think it goes back to that issue of we can't think of there being a binary between the consumerism of the period and some kind of spiritual quality of the season. Because Christmas spending is not rational. Like you say, in times of hardship, people still want to devote a certain amount of their money apparently to whatever emotional quality that. That spending gives them it has. You know, even. Even outside of. Even if people think they're working in a very secular way at Christmas, outside of, let's say, a Christian theological framework, the kind of spending we do at Christmas doesn't feel like normal spending. It gives us a different emotional effective response. And if it didn't, we wouldn't do it. So it's difficult to think that that, that's. That that feedback is not. Is that feedback mechanism that's kind of built into seasonal spending is gonna. Is gonna change in. You know, it has a kind of spiritual quality to it, you might say. When we. When we go and consume at Christmas.

Do you not think that the. The more irrationally people spend at Christmas and the more they. They. They live to unnecessary excess over the holidays, the more that does take away from the giving and the sort of the altruism otherwise, because, you know, the excess and the indulgence is inherently a little bit selfish. And, you know, so the two can't exist in equal measure, surely.

I think it's getting easier for them, too. I remember, you know, a few decades ago, before we all switched to online shopping, where it was really, really easy to feel how the consumerism nudged its way into the season because you would have to take off a day during the weekend to go to the shopping mall and go shopping, or you'd have to squeeze in time after work to sort of fight through traffic and all of that. Whereas now the shopping part seems almost unconscious. You might have an Amazon wish list created sometime in September and you just click the button. And so I think it's. Yeah, I think it's become even easier for all of that because you don't feel the time commitment or the jostle of other shoppers or all of that has largely vanished.

And I guess actually the sort of. The charitable or the sort of the heightened desire to be charitable over Christmas has been so integrated now into the sort of the shopping experience. You know, when you don't know you can buy something online and there's a pop up, do you want to round up your spending to the nearest dollar to give to charity or something? So actually, you know, maybe it isn't quite as deliberate, but because it's become quite an unconscious activity as part of the shopping experience. But we still do it, right?

But I do think we've coupled this yearly cycle around retail and charity where neither could exist without Christmas. Right. The retail business depends on Christmas. And I feel like the charitable giving industry, if you want to call it that, also depends on Christmas. It's when they tend to see most of their activity. And for the reasons you just mentioned, it's coupled with commerce. It's coupled with that time of year where we're feeling the most familial love and goodwill toward one and all.

And I guess as you mentioned a few minutes ago, Tom, actually there's something very relational about that. And actually retail and charity can work very effectively together, particularly around the holidays, because the more people spend, the more they want to give. And then charities benefit, retailers benefit. Everyone can kind of benefit if the ecosystem is kind of effective enough. But there will be people, there will be advertisers, there will be companies that do try and exploit that as much as possible just to make as much profit as possible over Christmas though, right?

Yeah, I think there's. For a while there was a notion called like cause related marketing, right. Where companies would align themselves with a charity, usually like sponsoring some event for, you know, research into some disease or another. But, you know, like, hey, let me walk in front of that parade. So I think, you know, there's always been an element of that, you know, trying to hook into sentiments people already have for charitable giving or just concerns about their favorite cause. But if it's the tide that lifts all ships, then it's hard to see the harm in it. Even if there is crass commercialism at.

Its core, you might say that the entirety of our lives these days is crass commercialism. And Christmas is the only time where that comes with a kind of slightly transcendental helping of good feeling and some possible altruism. So, so maybe it's not that Christmas is crass commercialism, is that everything is crass commercialism, and that this is the only time we might be able to. To elevate it even, even slightly.

Yeah, and I, I guess there's just a, a transparency about it at Christmas where I guess no one has to feel any sort of Sort of shame in partaking in that consumerism, when actually, yeah, it happens all year round. And actually because now of the nature of just the world being more digital and so much easier to give to charity, that sort of charitable activity happens, I would imagine, a lot more all year round as well. It's just everything's a lot more on show at Christmas, which is the nature of Christmas, I guess.

I think with Christmas giving, there has always been some element of performativeness to it. I think the evolution of Christmas charity was prior to the 19th century, if I'm getting it correctly. It was. That was more something that the monarchy and the Church, you know, handled. Individual giving wasn't really a thing until we get to the 19th century. And then it was sort of the upper classes. It was a way to kind of show a bit of status and it was. It was very performative. And I think that's just carried through as we get to more of the retail level. Charitable giving, if you want to call it that. Just individuals giving out of their own income.

Yeah.

I mean, it's built into. Even the way that we do it electronically now that you can bring in your friends or you can tweet afterwards. Hey, they make it very easy to say, I just gave to this cause to kind of, I don't know, get more interest in the charitable cause, but also to kind of show off a bit yourself.

Yeah. And do you think there ever has been a peak in sort of Christmas consumerism? And if so, when was it? Or are we still yet to experience it?

I'd say probably like 1400 or something. I mean, those. Those banquets were humongous they were having back then. They went on for days and days. I mean, can you imagine the value of the spices that were imported and the boar's heads and the swans stuffed with woodcock? Who knows what's going on there? I mean, I think that they. In the Middle Ages, they knew how to do it properly. So we're still trying to aspire to that level of Christmas feast in glory.

Yeah, yeah.

But certainly as families got bigger and retail became more prevalent, you know, I think, yeah, I'm not really sure that we've reached a peak in terms of consumer spending. Every year. We keep hearing people are expecting to spend less, and it seems to be holding steady, at least here in America.

I started this episode by asking, is capitalism killing Christmas in trademark cynical fashion? But I think the resounding answer from everything you've told me is know and everyone listening can still continue to enjoy the Holidays. Right.

I think capitalism is keeping Christmas afloat in a lot of ways. I don't think a utopian vision of a Christmas where you don't do any shopping. And let's think of what, what is under that umbrella of capitalism. You have a profit motive for creating new Christmas music and new Christmas entertainment. Everything you experience is part of the Christmas season. The decorations that you put up, those are consumer items. The media you consume is something someone's creating with a profit motive. Without any of that, what, what's left, really? What would Christmas be without it? So I don't think it's killing Christmas. I think it is Christmas.

And by partaking in this podcast episode about Christmas, we are participants in that. Consumers. Right. Because this podcast is like costing me nothing and I'd like to make money from it. So, you know, I guess we're doing it right now, right?

Yes, absolutely. This is.

And we're doing it well.

Yes, exactly. In fine style.

Well, I think we should wrap up so that everyone can enjoy their holidays, be it Christmas or Hanukkah or whatever else you're celebrating over this time. Tom, Brian, as always, thank you for joining me. If anyone listening to this wants to find out more, I'll leave links to Brian's podcast, Tom's book, and. And to Brian's book as well. We haven't even plugged that and all the other resources that we've mentioned in this episode. But I guess if anyone wants to connect with you guys, where can they do that?

Brian christmaspasspodcast.com Excellent.

And Tom thomasroy smith.com and I would just like to say buy Brian's book. That's my Christmas futurism tip.

Yes. Links in the show notes. Thank you both so much as always. And again, if anyone's listening to this and you enjoy what you hear, leave us a rating and a review and give us a follow as well, if you're not already. So that all future episodes appear in your feed and there are links in the show notes if you really love the show, to support us from as little as $1. So, as always, thank you all for listening. Thank you, Tom and Brian, and goodbye, Sa.