You don’t really need to get matching sweaters

There’s a scene in the holiday classic A Charlie Brown Christmas in which Snoopy is frantically decorating his doghouse so he can enter the “spectacular super-colossal neighbourhood Christmas lights and display contest.”

“Find the true meaning of Christmas. Win money, money, money!” reads the copy on the flyer Snoopy shoves into Charlie Brown’s hands.

“Oh no,” Charlie Brown despairs. “My own dog, gone commercial. I can’t stand it.”

This year marks the 60th anniversary of A Charlie Brown Christmas and, honestly, the special’s central concerns – commercialization and rampant consumerism — are still relevant today, especially as people have turned the holidays into a competitive sport on social media.

It starts with the spending.

Black Friday has arguably become one of America’s biggest cultural exports, right up there with McDonald’s and Starbucks. I was recently in Malta, a small island nation in the Mediterranean, and I could not believe the number of Black Friday advertisements everywhere. (Also, just to bring this anecdote full circle, my hotel’s lobby was located inside a Starbucks.)

Every post on social media at this time of year is an advertisement disguised as content. It’s all product hauls, all “finds” that have made influencers’ lives better, shinier and more “esthetic.” Comment “SHOP” and they’ll send you a link! Spoiler: it’s all from Amazon.

Speaking of, people have been Amazon-pilled into believing that shipping should not only be frictionless and as instantaneous as “adding to cart,” but that it should be free — an expectation that has been unfairly transferred onto local makers and businesses.

There’s the pressure to buy a whole new wardrobe for “party season.” I am not immune to this particular phenomenon. Every single year, I am tempted to purchase some sort of sequinned fast-fashion garment, shiny things for my magpie brain, even though most of the parties I attend at this time of the year are casual, befitting my beloved (and old!) Santa Knows What’s Up T-shirt.

There’s the pressure to buy all new decor based on what esthetic is trending that year. This year, FYI, it’s “Ralph Lauren Christmas,” which, best I can tell, is a lot of forest green, burgundy, navy and tartan — so, the ’90s, which is hilarious, because I bet a lot of people threw out the precise elements to create a “Ralph Lauren Christmas” years ago for being too dated.

There’s eye-wateringly expensive athleisure and skin care now jockeying for space alongside toys and stuffies on tweens’ wishlists because that’s what they are seeing all over social media.

There’s the Christmas photoshoots, necessitating matching sweaters or pyjamas for the whole family, a market Old Navy has cornered.

There are the Christmas Eve boxes, which are essentially an extra, separate stocking to be distributed on the 24th. There are the bougie advent calendars (stay tuned for a separate piece about that).

If these things sound magical to you, go wild. But the pressure to spend gobs of money to curate — and I’m using that word intentionally — a spectacular super-colossal Christmas feels extra noticeable this year because it’s coming at a time when a lot of people are struggling. Between inflation and trade uncertainty, consumers are feeling the pinch.

With that in mind, I’m not going to get too sanctimonious about people taking advantage of Black Friday sales that allow them to put presents under a tree, or people who need to rely on the convenience of easy shipping for a host of reasons that are none of my business.

But you know what I’m going to say, and that’s to consider supporting local instead of a billion-dollar company this year. Hit up a holiday market. Go to those little boutiques you’re always meaning to get to but never do. Bring a little slowness back into the season, because this is supposed to be fun, right?

Consider supporting charitable organizations that mean something to you.

And allow me to de-influence you. Allow me to be the voice that whispers: you can opt out. Of any of it. Of all of it. If you hate putting your family in matching sweaters for the annual card, don’t do it. If you hate giving gifts for the sake of it, stop. Unsubscribe from brands’ incessant emails. Unfollow content creators who make you feel bad.

At the end of A Charlie Brown Christmas, Linus delivers his famous monologue about the reason for the season. But even if you aren’t religious, the goodwill and peace part still resonates. This season should be about joy and love, actually.

Snoopy wins first prize, by the way. But the kids take his decorations to show a little love to Charlie Brown’s drooping tree and, by extension, to a little boy trying to understand, amid all the displays of over-consumption and greed, what Christmas is all about.

jen.zoratti@freepress.mb.ca