Christmas in September?!

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Does consumerism make us crazy?

It is the first week of September in Leipzig, Germany. Outside it is scorching hot (35 degrees) and yet I am standing in my local supermarket facing a full shelve of the best and most delicious Christmas treats; gingerbread, spekulazius, marzipan and more. But I don’t feel the slightest urge to buy anything! Why would anyone eat gingerbread four months before Christmas and three months before the start of advent? So why do all the big enterprises sell Christmas treats when autumn has not even started and we haven’t even celebrated Halloween? I find this bizarre and I am not the only one that thinks that way; on Facebook people comment the situation to be “perverse”, “out of place” and even as “unnatural”.

In the past ten years, the big supermarkets have started to sell Christmas treats earlier and earlier … And every year consumers critique this development. In an online study by the ‘Meinungsforschungsinstitut (German for opinion institute) YouGov’ done in 2014 one-third of the questionees have demanded a sale-ban for Christmas products before of a certain date and the great majority have asserted that they don’t buy them before December. But why does the sale continue then, if there is no consumer market? The answer is simple: because the figures say something very different than the assertions of the questionees: one-third of the products are already sold during September and October. This clearly shows that the early sale is very profitable for the producing enterprises. The supermarket chain REWE has even stated plans to sell Christmas treats all year round. As an explanation, the REWE-spokesman has claimed that until the 30-year war that was also the case, only afterwards when resources were scarce the sale of Christmas treats was limited to the month of December. He has also insisted that Christmas sweets are available the whole year round in large areas of eastern Europe.

But wouldn’t the all-year-round access to Christmas sweets make them mainstream and nothing special anymore? I still remember the excitement I had at the start of advent when I was a child when chocolate Santa-clauses, gingerbread men, chocolate covered marzipan bites and Stollen appeared in the supermarkets. Now Advent is nothing special anymore as it only blends in with the rest of the year. At least that is my opinion … what do you think?

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