Seasonal Overdose: Have the Holidays Become Too Much?
uring move-in week, I was shopping at Costco with my family when I came across the exclusive holiday season flavor of Poppi, alongside holiday gift wrapping paper. My first reaction was how I needed to buy it, but after a quick pause, I told myself that Halloween had not even passed yet. Each year, it feels like the holiday season starts earlier and earlier, and with that, I see the rise of discourse about how the holidays just don’t feel the same anymore. It feels as if we are rushing through moments instead of savoring them, which is something much larger than just Christmas ribbon and cranberry soda. When everything comes so early, that child-like anticipation we crave that made the holidays feel so special seems to be fading as the years go by. It leads me to wonder if the modern-age practices of advertising have made us lose the joy that comes from waiting.
A pattern I see during the holidays are Tik Toks being posted with vintage-esque photos of lower-school holiday parties and photos with warm lighting showcasing what the holidays used to look like as kids. All of the images invoke this feeling of nostalgia, and really bring you back to a time where things were simpler all around. All the comments on the videos consist of how the holiday season just does not feel the same, and how there is no holiday spirit. Have our expectations of the holidays evolved with social media and the extreme push of marketing? The constant comparison of memories makes the present feel almost inadequate when our nostalgia for the holidays overshadows our reality.
Growing up, my favorite thing to do with my sister was to read the catalogs of companies like Target, and circle the items that we wanted for Christmas, to then give to Santa. And as the years passed, the catalogs kept coming earlier, and eventually that tradition was lost because it was being sent to my house when I still had to pick what costume to wear for Halloween. Recently, I saw a TikTok of someone saying that they did the same thing I did with circling items as a kid and reminiscing on a time that was a lot more magical. When did that stop? The retail-ification of Christmas has stripped much of the magic from all of our holiday season. What was once a time centered on togetherness, gratitude, and simple joys has become a holiday focused on consumerism, and the habits that consumers keep following. The growing pressure of buying more and buying bigger has turned what should be a celebration into a transaction. The stress of sale cycles and our feeds being flooded with the holidays starting in August has put a shift on how we view the holidays subconsciously. Psychologists often note that anticipation is a key ingredient in joy and looking through the lens of the holidays, when we rush through seasons, we are lose the buildup that makes holidays so special. The constant stream of ads and influencers posting their recently decorated homes in October creates pressure to keep up, turning what should be a cozy tradition into a competitive display. This shift doesn’t just change our calendars, it changes how we experience happiness.
Today, the holiday season competes with a fast-paced, digital world where traditionshave shifted, and consumerism dominates. This makes me wonder if the spirit of
the holiday season has faded, and if we are too far deep to try and recover that happiness we lost. Social media amplifies this sentiment by showcasing curated memories and picture-perfect moments which only creates unrealistic comparisons that make current experiences feel hollow. Technology has also stripped away the anticipation and intimacy that once defined the holidays. These changes raise an important question: have the holiday magic truly disappeared, or are we simply longing for a version of it that exists only in memory?
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