A Money-Making Christmas

In ever-so-liberal Cambridge, the vast majority of shops have by now replaced “Merry Christmas” with “Season’s Greetings” or “Happy Holidays” in their storefront windows, if they give any indication whatsoever that the holiday shopping season is underway. Their intentions are anything but insidious—eager not to alienate potential customers, merchants have downgraded their well-wishing from mildly religious to totally bland. Unlike government buildings, stores are not required by law to maintain non-denominational decorations, but instead choose to do so—the invisible hand itself seems intent on keeping the church-going bourgeoisie in our midst docile at this time of year.

If the reasons for keeping Christ out of store windows during this time of year are economic, however, they might be ill-reasoned. When members of one religion (Christianity) are disproportionately more focused on buying gifts this month than the rest of the population, and when members of that religion make up an overwhelming majority of the population of the U.S. (just under 80 percent), pandering to purchasers who happen to believe that the son of God was born in a manger in the modern West Bank on Dec. 25 some 2,000 years ago seems like a fairly practical business decision. (Gentiles, be warned: any stories that your Jewish classmates might have told you in school about eight days of gifts and midnight visits from someone named Harry Hanukkah are strictly fictitious. Jews mostly eat fried potatoes, fried dough, and chocolate during Hanukkah, just like every other American.)

Sentimentalists will object here that shopkeepers’ motives for polluting their storefront displays with tinsel, holly, and plastic candelabras are an expression of holiday good cheer, perverse financial considerations be damned. That’s a very pleasant thought, but it defies common sense. This isn’t someone’s living room—it’s the marketplace, and the only warmth that matters is that of customers’ grabbing hands. Storeowners aren’t trying to cheer you up or brighten your day; they’re trying to pander to you, to make you spend. Tinsel and holly remind shoppers, most of them Christian, that they have gifts to buy, while candelabras succeed at pleasing both the most observant Christians, who interpret them as Advent candles, and the least observant Jews, who misidentify them as menorahs. The message, in each case, is clear: spend now, spend often.

So when it comes to deciding what seasonal slogan to paint in the store window, this city’s merchants most often make a flawed decision. Why would you try to please everybody, when the holiday shoppers you’re trying to woo are mostly Christians anyway, and so are unlikely to be offended by a greeting that references their lord and savior? Forget the political correctness that drives conservative chatterboxes like Bill O’Reilly up the wall; the decision here is strictly business. And forget about attracting non-Christian shoppers—either they’ll be making their usual purchases regardless of what your sign says, or they’re Jewish and are waiting for the post-Christmas clearance season to begin. That’s when I stock up, at least.

At this time of year, it’s in fashion either to lambaste exorbitant political correctness or to bemoan the inherent exclusionism in conventional holiday greetings, depending on one’s political stripes. But in the midst of the chest-thumping and hand-wringing, it’s best to remember what, in this country, makes the Christmas season go—money.

Adam Goldenberg ’08, a Crimson editorial editor, is a social studies concentrator in Winthrop House.