{"id":4613,"date":"2017-12-18T12:22:12","date_gmt":"2017-12-18T12:22:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.listenandlearn.org\/blog\/?p=4613"},"modified":"2017-12-18T12:24:30","modified_gmt":"2017-12-18T12:24:30","slug":"heres-to-celebrating-200-years-of-bemoaning-christmas-capitalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.listenandlearn.org\/blog\/heres-to-celebrating-200-years-of-bemoaning-christmas-capitalism\/","title":{"rendered":"A Commercial Christmas: Here’s to Celebrating 200 Years of Bemoaning Capitalism"},"content":{"rendered":"

The complaint that Christmas has lost its meaning to consumerism, capitalism, and overindulgence is almost as much an annual tradition as the event itself; not that such complaints necessarily mean we won\u2019t try to outdo ourselves year upon year, of course. But the nature of these complaints isn\u2019t new, and neither is the language we use to bemoan a lack of true spirit<\/i>. Here, we take a look at the kind of language we\u2019ve been using to moan about Christmas for the best part of 200 years.<\/p>\n

Linguistic Christmassing<\/b><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Photo via Public Domain Pictures<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n

The Cambridge University Press along with Lancaster University conducted an extensive piece of linguistics research entitled the Spoken British National Corpus<\/i>. This project looked to collate a 100-million-word text corpus of widely sourced examples of both written and spoken English. It is a hefty piece of research, and if your Christmas gifts aren\u2019t up to much this year, you could lose yourself in this for a few hours as you wait for your turkey to cook.<\/p>\n

But the Christmas gist of this corpus suggests that over a period of about twenty years, the language we use concerning Christmas has taken a capitalist turn. During the 1990s, words associated with Christmas included things such as: pantomimes, puddings, crackers, carols, wonderful, glow, <\/i>and holly<\/i>. But more recently phrases you\u2019re most likely to hear at this time of year are more: sales, spend, shopping, retailers, trading, knees-up, <\/i>and hangover<\/i>. So not only are we spending more for the biggest, best, shiniest of gifts, we\u2019re also indulging in more good times. Which some would say is a terrible thing! Though the words Father Christmas, tree, cards, <\/i>and decorations<\/i> appear to be consistently used, so it isn\u2019t all negative news.<\/p>\n

Ghost of Christmas Past<\/b><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Photo via Giphy<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n

And no, we\u2019re not talking about dear old Scrooge just yet, we\u2019ll get to him later.<\/p>\n

In the 1840s, founder of the New York Tribune Horace Greeley bemoaned that Christmas was nothing more than an excuse for young men and boys to drink themselves to excess in the streets. And by 1860 the same newspaper was monitoring trends in Christmas retailing much as we see in our tabloids today, with candy sales up, and jewellery sales down, due to nervousness pertaining to political news. Truly; nothing has changed at all<\/i>.<\/p>\n

While we\u2019re looking at the newspapers and other such publications: the Ladies Home Journal<\/i> in 1890 worried about Christmas descending into a festival of shopkeepers. The Times in 1911 suggested Santa\u2014an \u201calien saint\u201d\u2014had chapels of worship everywhere; in other words, toy fairs. In 1929 British newspapers pondered if the use of Xmas<\/i> as shorthand for Christmas removed Christ from Christmas in the rise of materialism. And in 1931 many a sermon suggested Christmas was doomed to be wiped out entirely by materialism.<\/p>\n

Literature<\/b><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Photo via Giphy<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n

A Christmas Carol was published in 1843, and has since been reproduced in animation, film, theatre, and just about every medium we can imagine. The story itself has contributed language to that we use around the festive season, with anyone who doesn\u2019t feel<\/i> the Christmas Spirit a bah, humbug<\/i>, and anyone who doesn\u2019t want to spend vast amounts of money a Scrooge<\/i>.<\/p>\n

In 2014, the New Statesman declared Scrooge to be an \u201canti-capitalist hero\u201d, pointing to his so-called miserly ways, frugal spending of money, bewilderment that the Cratchit family, already in poverty, would want to partake in a Merry<\/i> Christmas when it would leave them poorer still, and his observation to his nephew, that: \u201cWhat is Christmas to you but a time for paying bills without money<\/i>?\u201d<\/p>\n

Perhaps Scrooge didn\u2019t use the exact language of today, but his sentiment is very much the same as all of us who see this overindulgent period for what it is, and are tired of shop fronts enticing us in with Christmas fayre, and every advert on the TV encouraging us to spend even more. Although those decorated shop windows are also nothing new, with police being called back in 1909 to control crowds that had come to look at the decorations in London\u2019s busiest streets.<\/p>\n

And finally, Scrooge isn\u2019t even the only fictional character to be intolerant of Christmas. A character in E M Forster\u2019s Howards End<\/i> of 1910 talks about a shopping trip to London where \u201cvulgarity reigned\u201d in a torrent of toys and coins in place of a forgotten manger.<\/p>\n

So. Complaints about Christmas are nothing new, consumerism is still rife, and we\u2019re still trying to stuff more and more gifts under our Christmas trees. But it\u2019s good to know that traditions don\u2019t change, and the generations that preceded us were just as likely to love to complain about such things as no doubt our successors will! Happy Holidays!!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The complaint that Christmas has lost its meaning to consumerism, capitalism, and overindulgence is almost as much an annual tradition as the event itself; not that such complaints necessarily mean we won\u2019t try to outdo ourselves year upon year, of course. But the nature of these complaints isn\u2019t new, and neither is the language we(\u2026)<\/p>\n

\n
\n\t \t\t\t\tCONTINUE READING »<\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":37,"featured_media":4614,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[763,421,766,764,600,762,66,30,765,767,31],"class_list":["post-4613","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-everyday-language","tag-capitalism","tag-christmas","tag-christmas-sales","tag-consumerism","tag-happy-holidays","tag-holiday","tag-language","tag-language-learning-2","tag-sales","tag-twilight-zone","tag-words"],"yoast_head":"\nA Commercial Christmas: Here's to Celebrating 200 Years of Bemoaning Capitalism<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"It's that time of year, so better get that shopping in, right? 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