Category: Holiday Mythology

• Christmas Commercialization Plot

  The Christmas Commercialization Plot was the belief that modern consumer Christmas was not an organic continuation of older holiday customs but a deliberate remaking of winter celebration by department stores, advertisers, illustrators, and mass retailers. In its strongest form, the theory held that the modern visual Santa—jovial, rotund, child-facing, gift-distributing, and tightly linked to store windows and shopping lists—was standardized to train children into desire and consumption. The theory drew power from a real historical process: the nineteenth-century remaking of Santa’s image through writers and illustrators, followed by the intensive use of Santa by department stores between the late nineteenth century and the 1920s. Under the conspiracy interpretation, this was not branding alone but psychological conditioning disguised as holiday magic.