Christmas Villians (an editorial)

It would seem, as every hunkers down into their collective bunkers and places of relative safety ready to weather the storm that is shopping extravagance, that certain characters rise out of the melee to present themselves along archetypes that, while silly and perhaps antiquated, seem to make a lot of sense. A longitudinal study done by a pair of researchers, Cele Otnes and Tina Lowrey, has recently been edited and released as a book with the title: "Contemporary Consumption Rituals: A Research Anthology" in which there are several chapters that draw startling similarities between shopping at Christmas time and the fairy tales many western nations children grow upon.

The heroines, several women the researchers followed for 7 years marking their Christmas behaviors and attitudes, showed "vast amounts of craftiness and even courage as they battled their various villains and obstacles in their creation of Christmas," where the women's own version of their experiences were described by the researchers as involving "valiant heroines, evil villains, daring deeds and dastardly deceptions."

While the evil villains could be anything from the father who delays decisions, to a rude person in line in a store, there is no doubt that the stories, if embellished, hold an amazing degree of truth, and the work of these women certainly plays out accordingly, with a 'fairy tale' ending, a Christmas that was more spectacular than the one before it. Despite all connections between the attitudes of these women and the conclusion drawn by the researchers, this writer wonders where the consumerism has gone too far... and perhaps, we've already gone past that point of no return.