Monday, November 12, 2012

Evolution of Christmas

Blog 2
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. .

·         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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