Psychological Meanings in Consumerism

PSYCHOLOGICAL MEANINGS IN CONSUMERISM

Christopher Ebbe, Ph.D.    12-24-10

It has become common to question the commercialism that has overtaken and swamped the Christmas holiday, but it is still worthwhile to examine why this has occurred.  In most families in the U.S., the gift-giving and gift-exchanging are much more important than the celebration of the birth of Christ.  There are a number of reasons for this, besides the decline in religious belief.  Consumption as an almost exclusive gratification route and the equating of value in general with money value are the central underlying dynamics, and there is no doubt that for most families in this country, gifts and parties are the only important aspects of the season.

Starting with the symbolic gift that St. Nicholas delivered to children who were beset on Christmas Eve with mixed hope and fear, it gradually became common in wealthier families to give gifts that children wanted or could use (toys, clothes, etc.).  As wealth expanded, families expectably used more and more money on these gifts (just as they are now using more and more money on “designer” clothes for children). 

There is no mystery regarding children’s motives in this matter; they want as many toys as possible, and they usually want whatever is popular or faddish.  Parents’ motives are more complex.  Of course they want to do nice things for their children, but there is more to it than that.  Parents are driven not only by wishes to please their children but also by memories of their own Christmas gift experiences and by their own very human hopes and fears. 

(1) Parents want to give their children exactly what the children want for Christmas, hence the common practice of directly asking children what they want, instead of (as used to be commonplace) noticing what children want and providing it as a surprise, if possible.  (Personalized giving—i.e., choosing a gift that one thinks the recipient will enjoy based on one’s knowledge of the individual recipient—has almost disappeared, with most giving either based on directly asking what is wanted or the use of standard gifts (goodie baskets, alcoholic beverages, food, Christmas ornaments, plants, etc.).)  Most parents will go to extraordinary lengths to obtain exactly what their children want for Christmas.  The psychological meaning for parents in providing exactly what children want is “people, including myself, should be able to get exactly what they want in life.”  Giving exactly what is wanted attempts to demonstrate that this is possible.  Children absorb this hope from parents and pass it on as adults.  The fact that in the rest of the year one rarely gets exactly what one wants is interpreted negatively—i.e., that it is the ideal of Christmas that is appropriate and “normal” and the deprivations and disappointments of the rest of the year are abnormal.

(2) The practice of giving one or two gifts to each loved one has almost disappeared as well, with the number of gifts to any one person limited only by the total available to be spent on gifts.  The psychological meaning of this for parents (and for children) is “people should get from life just as much as they want.”  As noted above, we want to believe that the gratifications of Christmas are “normal,” and the evidence that this “reality” is actually “abnormal” is ignored. 

Neither of these statements (“people should be able to get exactly what they want in life” and “people should get from life just as much as they want”) is true or even reasonable, but these are the primary motive statements that we teach children in this society, and the result is that people spend most of their energies in life trying to get exactly what they want and to get as much as they want.  A corollary statement that is implied by the above two statements is “getting everything you want will make you happy and satisfied,” which is also a false statement.  The consumer and production economies work hard to keep this “abnormal” hope alive all year—that if we keep on consuming, we can achieve unblemished happiness.

The alternative to the above implied and unconscious messages is a more “realistic,” less “idealistic” view of life, one version of which might be that human beings are marvelously adapted to life on this Earth and manage, in general, to survive and even prosper, that the overall gratification level that we have is sufficient, even if part of the time we do not get what we want or as much as we want, and that it is less frustrating to accept the gratification level that we can reasonably achieve than it is to be always hoping for more and frustrated when we do not get it.  While this attitude may result in somewhat less gratification in life, since there will be somewhat less motive power behind the push for gratification, it will also result in a more contented and satisfied life than a life that is always wanting more.

Our society teaches us to value the drive for maximum gratification, partly because most of our immigrants (most of us) came here to get more, but the result is that we live relatively discontented lives and rarely feel satisfied.  The satisfaction of first having the BMW fades pretty quickly, and we have forgotten to be glad that we have cars at all.  It would be healthy for us all to think seriously about what is really important in life and to orient our energies in those directions.  It is hard to help children grasp that being satisfied, even with fewer gifts than their friends received, is an important part of a healthier kind of life—healthier for ourselves, for those around us, and for the environment.  (Questioning the ultimate value of maximum gratification will also lead most people to question the “status hierarchy” assignment of value to people—the other significant, natural but unquestioned determinant, besides gratification level, of the self-esteem of most people in our society.)

  

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