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Our text for this, the fourth shopping day before Christmas, is from a
scene in Macy's locker room in "Miracle on 34th Street." The head of
the store's toy department has just given Kris Kringle, the newest
Santa Claus, a list of overstocked toys to be foisted on the children
in his lap. "Imagine, making a child take something it doesn't want just because
he bought too many of the wrong toys," Kris says indignantly to
Alfred, a teenager sweeping the floor. "That's what I've been fighting
against for years, the way they commercialize Christmas." "Yeah," Alfred replies, "there's a lot of bad isms floating around
this world, but one of the worst is commercialism. Make a buck, make a
buck. Even in Brooklyn it's the same -- don't care what Christmas
stands for, just make a buck, make a buck." It is easy to sympathize with them, especially if your credit cards
are currently maxed out. But let us, in the spirit of another holiday
movie, "It's a Wonderful Life," contemplate what Christmas would be
like without commercialism. For starters, Kris would be out of a job at Macy's, but that wouldn't
be his major problem. He would be out of an identity. The American
tradition of Christmas gift- giving was largely the creation of
19th-century merchants eager to get rid of their year-end inventory.
After setting sales records by staying open late on Christmas Eve of
1867, Macy's went on during the 1870's to introduce window decorations
and to bring Santa Claus into the store. Santa, originally an elfin figure in the 1823 poem "A Visit From St.
Nicholas," was transformed into a full-size figure by Harper's Weekly
later in the century. But the Santa we recognize didn't become a
convention until he was needed to bolster winter sales of soft drinks
in the 1930's, according to James B. Twitchell, the author of "Adcult
USA: The Triumph of Advertising in American Culture." "The jolly old St. Nick that we know from countless images," Dr.
Twitchell writes, "did not come from Western European folklore. He
came from the yearly advertisements of the Coca-Cola Company." This
Santa appeared for decades along with slogans like "Travel refreshed"
and "It's my gift for thirst." In 1939 he got a new reindeer, Rudolph,
whose story was invented by a Montgomery Ward copywriter. Such selfish commercialism seems antithetical to the Christmas spirit
of good will to all, the purest expression of Christianity's
revolutionary altruism. Most ancient religions and tribes did not
preach good will to strangers, as Matt Ridley notes in his history of
human niceness, "The Origins of Virtue." Rules like "Thou shalt not
kill" typically didn't apply to heathens or foreigners. Christians preached universal love, but that didn't stop them from
slaughtering infidels and putting their own interests ahead of
strangers'. A society based on altruism sounds noble, which is why
socialism is so appealing in theory, but it works only if it's small
enough for everyone to know one another, as in a clan or a convent.
Once strangers are involved, you generally need to enforce good will
with soldiers, police officers and tax collectors. Socialist ideals of solidarity didn't do much good to the comrades who
tried shopping at Soviet department stores. The clerks have always
been more helpful at Macy's because commercialism, for all its bad
press, fosters voluntary cooperation with strangers. You can see this
clearly in "Miracle on 34th Street" after Kris Kringle insists on
directing parents to other stores for toys that aren't in Macy's. Word gets out that Macy's Santa is sending customers to Gimbels, and
the resulting publicity is a bonanza for the store. Mr. Macy,
recognizing the value of what economists today call the good will
factor, promptly orders all the store's clerks to emulate Kris Kringle (and soon Gimbels is copying him, too). "Never in my entire career have I seen such a tremendous and immediate
response to a merchandising policy," Mr. Macy says exultantly. "We'll
be known as the helpful store, the friendly store, the store with a
heart, the store that places public service ahead of profits - and
consequently we'll make more profits than ever before." His heart may not be any more generous than Scrooge's, but Mr. Macy is
nonetheless dispensing holiday cheer to throngs of strangers. He is
demonstrating a paradox recognized long ago by Adam Smith: capitalism
can inspire even the most selfish, greedy people to behave as if they
cared about others. It's not Kris Kringle's idea of the Christmas
spirit, but you could think of it as another miracle on 34th Street. |
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Laid off American workers/consumers/taxpayers/volunteers/human resources
denied wages or profit from an independent business for producing these toys
can't pay for these toys or afford to live anywhere in THE REAL WORLD. |
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