QUOTING lines from one social thinker: “Philosophers until now have only interpreted the world in various ways… the point, however, is to change it.”
Fixed or ever changing is a thought-bombarding question to raise when it comes to Christmas traditions.
For instance, I was born in the middle 80’s. I was raised in an upper middle class family and my most fundamental idea of Christmas started at home where we receive gifts of toys that are wrapped fancily from parents and godparents.
In fact, I could still smell the kinds of wrappers used. I also recall the huge pillowcase-sized Santa Clause socks where candies and sweets were placed that were hanged on the doors of our bedrooms. There was also a feast-like food served at the dining table where lovely conversations take place that did not seem to get drowned by the soprano-pitched sounds those then musical Christmas lights played.
This is how my young mind defined Christmas then. When any of the variables - gifts, food, and lovely talks - were absent, it was not Christmas anymore.
Every family has their own Christmas traditions. And one cannot disparage the value placed by Filipino traditions in Family Christmas Celebrations.
This is how we are socialized and conditioned to think and expect during the Yuletide Season.
Fast track in post-modern times, Christmas has somehow lost its genuine meaning to the hands of the capitalists.
In particular, Christmas provides the best opportunity in the year for profit: gifts, sales, promotions, overpriced tickets etc.
It is the most awaited time of the year to get everything new from shoes to hair clips to mobile phones and electronic gadgets.
Karl Marx, a classical sociologist in 18th Century has provided in his work, “The Communist Manifesto,” plausible explanations on how capitalism has engulfed Christmas.
Marx, in the social sciences circle, is sometime thought of as a “doctor” who has diagnosed the social ills of capitalism in order for us to navigate to a more promising future.
Why we are conditioned or socialized to give expensive materialistic gifts during this holiday is because of what Marx termed “Commodity Fetishism,” which means we tend to value things that have no objective value.
Because of this, we are enslaved by financial constraints during Christmas as gift-giving has become obligatory. And the content of the gifts has strong association to how the receiver and giver feel mutually. Like the more lavish the gift the more likely intimate the relationship.
Likewise, gifts have become a tool to build relationships especially during corporate parties. And it is also during this time that some big-time companies can give away appliances like Plasma TV, living room showcase, dining room sets, etc. In one Christmas party I had joined years ago, the grand price was a Jeep worth hundreds of thousands.
In Marx’s words, this is what he called “Endemic Capitalistic Crises.” At its crudest it is rather odd: it means that capitalistic crisis is not a problem of scarcity but rather of abundance.
Our factories and technologies are so efficient that everyone can be given cars, houses and access to decent school and specialist doctors. For Marx, few of us need to work because the economy is so productive.
But in reality, the truth is otherwise as these resources are distributed based on income and wealth rather than being given to all by birth rite as members of the society as what had been a beautiful Utopian dream as Jesus in heaven.
Perhaps the most important aspect of Marx’s thoughts and influence on Christmas being capitalistic is that there is an insidious and subtle way that the economic system colors the sort of ideas that we end up having.
The economy, according to Marx, generates what he calls an “ideology.”
A capitalist society is where most people-rich and poor - believe in all sorts of things that are really just “value judgments” that relate back to the economic system. For example, a person who does not work is worthless, that leisure beyond few weeks in a year is sinful, that more belongings will make us happier, and that worthwhile people (people in power and authority) will help us make more money.
It is this ideology that we socially construct influence how we think about Christmas. And that Christmas possesses a materialistic aspect, undeniably.
But is this what Christmas really meant to begin with? What is Christmas then beyond the capitalistic ideologies of materialism?
In short, Marx argued that one of the biggest evil in capitalism is not that there are corrupt people at the top but that capitalist ideologies teach us to be anxious, competitive, conformist and politically complacent.
Still feel anxious on what to give for Christmas?
*****
The writer is a medical professional and has been writing as a health columnist of this paper since 2008. He is an alumnus of Xavier University Ateneo de Cagayan from Elementary to Graduate School. Currently he is a faculty member of the Medical Education Unit for the Doctor of Medicine Program of Southwestern University Phinma, where he is likewise finishing his Master of Public Health.