Project Advisor(s) (Students Only)
Dr. Eric Stewart
Presentation Type (All Applicants)
Oral Presentation
Disciplines (All Applicants)
Education
Description, Abstract, or Artist's Statement
Christmas seems to start earlier and earlier every year. It starts with the music that plays on the radio, then retail stores begin to drape their shelves with red and green streamers, followed by Christmas movies running on every other channel. Every December, Christmas feels almost inescapable. The holiday manages to find its way into every facet of public life in the United States. Christians and non-Christians alike find themselves exchanging gifts with friends and loved ones on the 25th of December every year. Christmas is able to be so pervasive because of how unassuming it is. You participate in the rituals of Christmas because it markets itself as being trivial and wholesome. Christmas is much more than a Christian holiday, it is a secular consumerist holiday that has an unassuming nature and has Christian trappings. I will be looking over the many ways that Christmas is able to frame us as religious subject. How the annual rituals that take place in America every December play a role in shaping how we perceive our world.
Augustana Digital Commons Citation
Burroughs, Shelby. "Consumer Capitalist Christmas: How Participation in Christmas Frames Us as Religious Subjects" (2019). Celebration of Learning.
https://digitalcommons.augustana.edu/celebrationoflearning/2019/presentations/4
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International License.
Consumer Capitalist Christmas: How Participation in Christmas Frames Us as Religious Subjects
Christmas seems to start earlier and earlier every year. It starts with the music that plays on the radio, then retail stores begin to drape their shelves with red and green streamers, followed by Christmas movies running on every other channel. Every December, Christmas feels almost inescapable. The holiday manages to find its way into every facet of public life in the United States. Christians and non-Christians alike find themselves exchanging gifts with friends and loved ones on the 25th of December every year. Christmas is able to be so pervasive because of how unassuming it is. You participate in the rituals of Christmas because it markets itself as being trivial and wholesome. Christmas is much more than a Christian holiday, it is a secular consumerist holiday that has an unassuming nature and has Christian trappings. I will be looking over the many ways that Christmas is able to frame us as religious subject. How the annual rituals that take place in America every December play a role in shaping how we perceive our world.