Corporations kill Christmas

Christmas is great. I like Christmas. The lights, the carols, the tree, you know the whole shebang. I don’t even mind corporations having sales, and commercials trying to get people to buy presents to give to their loved ones.

If there is a time of the year when people are likely to spend money on gifts, they might as well buy products right? So companies keep airing Christmas commercials earlier. I saw commercials trying to use the holidays to push products before Thanksgiving and I can live with that.

What I have a problem with is commercials trying to use the holidays to push products on Jan. 10. The holidays are over. They came, they left, they were great but now they are over. Stop it. I’ve gone back to school, taken down the Christmas lights and I’m done. Oh wait, we still have stupid commercials trying to push products using the holidays as a catalyst.

Sure the economy is bad. The US has had the biggest job loss numbers since 1945. When people don’t have jobs they spend less money, but does that justify continuing to use the holidays to try and maintain high revenues? Companies spent $140 billion last year on advertising for the Christmas season. There has been plenty of research done that shows that commercials convince people to buy things.

The problem is that corporations have one purpose for existing: to make money. In fact, Ford vs. Dodge, the famous Michigan court case, explicitly stated that a company is beholden to its shareholders to maximize profits.

For the most part, corporations are not allowed by law to have the company’s primary motivations stem from the employees or the community. So unless the corporations running the ads are made to think running Christmas ads are not profitable, legally nobody can do anything about it. It’s unfortunate and ruins Christmas.

By ruining Christmas they are ruining the season where companies make the most money.

In the past, consumer’s biggest spending day has been Black Friday, but in 2008 sales in November had dropped by about 4 percent. Sales in December were also down. But if the holidays couldn’t get people out in mass numbers to spend money it seems to me that pushing the holidays when it’s not the holidays wouldn’t work.

So, now a car company, whose last commercial I watched featured cars with bows on top, is not only not selling cars—something no one is doing right now—but now said company looks like an ass.

The holidays are great for pushing products, but if you overplay that card, eventually people will adjust and your ace in the hole won’t be an ace anymore.

If people can help it, I’m pretty sure they don’t enjoy doing business with people who ruin Christmas. That would lead one to believe that commercials featuring cars with bows on them are bad for business. So please, I beg of you: Stop, let the holidays fade. You can always do better in 2009, right?