Kenny Saechao
Christmas time is approaching and to the lay public
it is a time of joy, peace, love, and gifts!
I personally think
Christmas was twisted in such a beneficial matter to rich corporate owners. Something
that started out as a sacred pagan holiday which worshipped the sun and the
return of brighter days was appropriated by Christians into the birth of their
savior. America was founded on religious means so anything Christian-related seems
to go unquestioned in American society because it was all incorporated into the
culture. Now, you take this religious holiday- a means by which people would
join together in unity and peace to rejoice love and spread the holy message of
Jesus Christ- and somewhere along the way it turns into this giant shopping
spree where materialistic objects equate love.
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Now going off my thought about how the meaning of
Christmas has been distorted and reinvented time and time again, I am trying to
envision Christmas in the future. In this weeks’ reading “Santa’s Sweatshop: In
a global economy, it’s hard to know who made your gift- and under what
conditions” Holstein, Palmer, Ur-Rehman, and Ito all address how terrible sweat
shops are. They address the problem of buying/supporting companies that exploit
their workers and pay them super low wages. For example, some of Mattels’ workers
only make $1.81 a day. Anyone here who has ever bought anything for themselves knows
that making $1.81 a day won’t yield a very positive outcome in terms of buying anything
or even supporting yourself. I am wondering, if people really move beyond
consumerism, what would become of Christmas? What if everyone started making
gifts? What if no one bought anything? What would the economy be like without the
Christmas shopping spree boost? There is no certain answer, in fact there is no
certainty that anything will even change. But I hope Christmas will evolve
beyond sweatshop workers, beyond the exploitation of people and their labor,
and I hope somewhere in this mess of lost meaning something more than gifts
will equate to love.
Pack, David C. "The True Origin of Christmas." The True Origin of Christmas. The Real Truth, 10 Nov. 2003. Web. 12 Nov. 2012. .
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Holstein, Palmer, Ur-Rehman, Ito. “Santa’s
Sweatshop; In a Global Economy, it’s Hard to Know Who Made Your Gift- and Under
What Conditions.” Print.
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