As the snow falls from the sky, couples snuggle by the fire, spending the Christmas season together. After a holiday movie marathon, you might find couples out holiday shopping, attending festive events or ice skating. Gifts are bought in excess, and exchanging them is often a highlight of the season for many couples.
Transitioning to February, you’ll find that love is in the air. Rows and rows of chocolates, teddy bears and roses fill grocery store shelves, pushing couples to buy them. On this day, couples will find themselves going out for a bite to eat and buying gifts, often matching pieces that become a physical object of their love.
What do these holidays have in common? Sure, it could be the amount of time that couples spend with each other during these time periods, but I think the biggest overlap is the amount of money spent and how closely consumerism is tied to these holidays.
Consumerism, according to the Peddie School, is “the idea that increasing the consumption of goods and services purchased in the market is always a desirable goal, and that a person's well-being and happiness depend fundamentally on obtaining consumer goods and material possessions,” and it is an idea that has continuously permeated society. By this definition, consumerism is a positive occurrence that fuels both economic growth and personal well-being, although many view this desire for material goods as negative because of the potential for negative psychological effects and financial strain.
And thinking about consumerism in relation to these holidays, it’s evident that buying things for one’s significant other becomes the physical evidence of their affection, and there is a strong drive to prove that affection. It is a presentation, telling the world that “you are being loved, showing them how you are being loved, and that you are being loved out loud, in a tangible and physical way,” as Suraya Jasmine said. The problem with this, however, is that making a purchase for a significant other has become a key token of affection, and it has increased the pressures and expectations to buy. Consumerism turns emotions into a product, marking every occasion as a time to buy something. For birthdays and Christmas, you’ll buy presents, for anniversaries, you’ll buy jewelry, and for apologies, flowers are often bought. Through this lens, capitalism equates affection with experiences that need to cost money, and this becomes a problem when we feel the only way to express any kind of feeling is through a purchase. Love becomes transactional, and the idea of sincerity gets replaced with the pressure to buy in order to ‘prove’ one’s love.
Gift-giving should not be demonized, however. Gifts are a way of expressing emotions, building connections and showing appreciation with something that is tangible. Consumerism (and capitalism) turns this concept on its head, and instead sets the precedent that there are ‘good’ and ‘bad’ gifts and that holidays are meant for consumption rather than connection.
There are many ways to express genuine emotion without the notion of capitalism, but there are three that stand out for me: creating gifts without consumerism, practicing acts of service and speaking your feelings directly. By hand-making gifts, you can remove consumerism from the gift-giving equation, creating gifts that are thoughtful and intentional, created with a specific person in mind. Some examples of gifts that exclude consumerism include handwritten notes or letters, a shared playlist, a poem or song, a homemade meal, and time spent doing something meaningful. Instead of spending money, spending your time doing things that are practical for someone else can do more for bonding than any gift could. Some examples of acts of service include cooking a meal, helping with a project or showing up physically and/or emotionally. Finally, speaking your feelings directly allows for those emotions to be conveyed plainly, in a way that is harder to do, but feels exponentially more real.
When all is said and done, the key to a meaningful gift is intentionality. A gift with the intention of consumerism says, “I’m showing how much I can afford.” A gift with the intention of genuine connection says: “I’m showing that I know you.”
The Student Movement is the official student newspaper of Andrews University. Opinions expressed in the Student Movement are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editors, Andrews University or the Seventh-day Adventist church.