Christmas is an old and storied tradition, drawing upon centuries of rituals and beliefs so that people around the world can enjoy a shared celebration of fellowship and gift-giving. People reunite with relatives, children stay up way later than they would be allowed in the rest of the year, and people sing in the streets.

Christmas also has another side, though. Huge shopping sprees have become as much a symbol of the season as Santa Claus or evergreen trees. Many people have complained about such rampant commercialism, saying that the “true spirit” of Christmas is being lost underneath all the rampant advertising and push to buy the newest and shiniest consumer goods.

What these sorts of people tend to miss, though, is that this sort of commercialism of the holiday is pretty much inevitable. Whether you think of it as good or bad, capitalism is the ruling force of modern global culture today. When the population needs or wants something badly enough, those that take the initiative to supply that need (and do with the highest quality and peak efficiently), will be rewarded the most handsomely.

This Christmas consumerism pretty much got its start when the holiday moved from the streets to the home. Before the 1800s, Christmas was primarily known for drunken revelry and endless feasting, in a direct continuation of the revelry that followed the Roman celebration of Saturnalia, which was (like Christmas), also held on the winter solstice.

In fact, it got so infamously rowdy that the puritans attempted to stop it. Citing the lack of support from the Bible as proof of the celebration’s illegitimacy as a Christian holiday, puritans in England decreed the day to be instead a day of “fasting and humiliation”, and made it an active criminal offense to publicly celebrate the holiday. Even after Christmas celebrations were eventually legalized again in England, the ban still held sway on the American colonies for quite a while longer.

When penning “A Visit from St. Nicholas” in 1823 (better known by its opening line: “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas”), author Clement Clarke Moore’s home of New York was thronged with roving, noisy crowds during the season. He wanted to contrast all that with a homely, comfortable, quiet celebration indoors, where (to quote the poem) “Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse”.

With this shift in the perception of what a Christmas celebration “should” be, came a change in what the focus of the celebration was. Less emphasis was placed on loud partying, and more on gift-giving. Of course, with this newfound emphasis, came a newfound anxiety to buy the perfect gift for a loved one before Christmas. It was the perfect opening for retailers and sellers to jump in.

While Santa is certain to have worn red and white before Coca-Cola used their matching color schemes to their advantage in their advertisements, the creation of Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer (yet another staple of the “Christmas canon”) was a business enterprise through-and-through. The crimson-nosed caribou first debuted in a booklet published by the department store Montgomery Ward, who just so happened to carry books and assorted merchandise carrying his heartwarming and child-friendly story. This tradition of selling the “story” of Christmas and its varied cast of charming characters (from jolly old Santa Claus to his innumerable elf helpers) continues to this very day, from movies like “The Polar Express” to services allowing children to receive santa letters.

In the winter of 1867, the Manhattan department store Macy’s kept itself open until midnight on Christmas Eve. This was a deliberate move to capitalize on the newfound phenomenon of last-minute Christmas shoppers. There was pushback, even back then. The author Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote: “there are worlds of money wasted, at this time of year, in getting things that nobody wants and nobody cares for after they are got”. You can find slightly re-phrased versions of this exact same sentiment in hundreds of columns, both online and in newspapers, every year.

But even though objections to the “consumerist excess” of modern Christmas celebrations are somewhat exaggerated, there is a point hiding inside the hyperbole. We spend too much time looking out for the “perfect gift” for a loved one, that we forget that such a notion is completely subjective. In the end, perhaps a simple (but thoughtful) gift may be more meaningful than the latest hyped-up gadget fresh off the store shelves. Indeed, for some people, some quality social time or a listening ear might be more valuable than any physical gift you might hand to them.

Or maybe the best gift for your gamer kid really is that high-end gaming PC he’s been clamouring for since forever. Who knows? Everybody is different.

So, without further ado, merry Christmas, and I hope you don’t get stampeded by last-minute Christmas shoppers!