ABSTRACT
Holiday spending sprees have become a tradition: Toy companies and several other industries make half or more of their sales in the last couple of months of the year. The orgy of Christmas consumption, of course, is hardly in keeping with the anti-materialist philosophy of the man for whom the holiday is named. A number of American holidays have been created or promoted for the express purpose of selling goods. Some Americans, hung over from the consumer binges of the 1980s and sobered by the economic realities of the 1990s, are fighting back against the hype and commercialism of Christmas. Some people, disturbed by the hollowness of the typical commercial Christmas, are rescuing the benevolent spirit of the holiday by donating to charities instead of buying gifts. As holidays have succumbed to commercialism, so have family celebrations and rituals. In the close competition for most-commercialized ritual, weddings clearly take the cake.
