Those of us, who believe in Jesus, decide to set a date aside I honour and commemoration of his birth and the blessings he came to offer us. In more recent years, however, we have decided to show appreciation to others for the goodness they have extended towards us during the year by purchasing gifts. Those gifts, which we offer as tokens are representative of the gifts, were brought be the Three Wise Men for Jesus on his day of birth.
Commercialization, however, escalates because the fruits of our own labour do not make many of the gifts that are traded. It is substantially more convenient to stroll into any department store or corner shop and purchase a gift which one deems as appropriate for the occasion. This convenience has allowed the opportunistic business ‘sharks’ of the world to exploit such an opportunity and diminish the importance of one of Christianity’s most significant holidays. Commercialization is therefore the outcome of this exploitation and its increase is becoming more and more evident. Christmas then suffers as business flourish. The actual reason for this holiday becomes so immersed under the commercial blanket, that persons not only forget the true reason behind Christmas but the businessmen structure their entire operations around the influx in sales during the Christmas period.
The effect this has on the society cannot be ignored. Businesses slash prices in order to attract their customers and the increase in sales is so high during this period that profits surpass any of those made during the previous periods of the same year. Over-working becomes the direct effect of this over commercialization. Persons have to support their families and since the Christmas period is the busiest time of the year, the business owners extend their closing hours which means that the average working day is now extended by three or more hours. Christmas is only celebrated on one day but the preparations for this day begin at least one month in advance. Therefore, the working population is becoming more and more exhausted and over-worked for approximately three weeks. However, there is one positive result from this which is the increased amount of income for some persons in dire need of the money. Unfortunately, this same income usually results in the purchase of extravagant gifts, as the owners of this money have to do their shopping as well. The harsh reality of this Christmas Over-working is that people are so fatigue on Christmas day that they cannot reflect on the blessings they have received during the year because the majority of them eat then sleep.
The effects which were mentioned above such as the over working, over spending and exploitation of a once sacred holiday are a testament of commercialization of Christmas. Therefore, I strongly believe that Christmas has now become too commercialized.