Christmas: The Season of Commerce

While Christmas is one of the most joyous seasons of the year, a great deal of that joy comes in the form of the exchange of gifts and cards. Then again, there are also such things that provide what is called peripheral joy. This peripheral joy is the good feeling that we derive from that fantastic and familiar images of common Christmas items and decorations such as Christmas trees, mistletoes and their like. Then, there are those really cool pop culture tie in Christmas items such that combine a holiday theme with such familiar entertainment icons such as Star Trek Christmas tree ornaments, Charlie Brown Christmas stockings and, for those who have really good memories, a record album featuring the Six Million Dollar Man called A Bionic Christmas. Yes, Christmas has a great deal of merchandise associated with this and while do not often think about it Christmas has such a massive effect on commerce that is quite a positive thing.

For example, did you know that in the year 2000 the E-commerce shopping figures of Christmas time sales were upwards of $10 billion? Yes, that was billion with a “B” and it proves that the Christmas time juggernaut of improved commerce has shown no signs of slowing down since it first started by accident over 200 years ago. 

Gift giving as a commercial entity was not commonplace, however, prior to 1820. The most common gifts were food, but this later became expanded to giving books to children which later expanded into giving a whole variety of gifts to children to expanding to giving gifts to people of all ages. 

While Christmas traditions had been around for many centuries, most historians point to Germany in the 19^th century as the birthplace of the when Christmas met free market capitalism. At this time, placing ornaments on Christmas trees had already been a popular activity for many years but it was during this time period that Christmas ornaments were first made commercially available for sale in gift shops. The sales of these ornaments completely took shop owners by surprise as the sales figures far exceeded anyone’s expectations. The door was now open for Christmas ornaments to provide commerce with a huge seasonal cash flow that could exceed sales of any other time of the year. With the introduction of Christmas cards sold for commercial profit only a short time later, the Christmas season quickly became a time of the year where millions and millions of dollars could be earned during a relatively short six week period.