It is Christmas. Greeting cards start arriving, Santa’s escalate windows and balconies chased in order by: comets, reindeers seeming climbers much cleverer than Messner, twinkling trees, Saturday Night Fever style balls changing colour under the effect of an acid and, for those who dare, even the hut with the crib (but for that you need the administrator permission on the façade or a large terrace). Chain letters start arriving through social media, jingles through radio, the desire to embrace and celebrate with no matter whom because at Christmas we forgive everyone and everything. It is a holy, strictly secular time that makes all of us better at least for one day and in the intent.
It is now Christmas, it shows in every way. It approaches each year with increasing frequency. It brings some extra pounds accumulated through dinners and drinks to see people do things and exchange greetings, traffic jams, long lines at supermarkets, stress and frenzy as if it was the “last day of the world”, to discover that not only time goes forward, but we start again shortly after with Valentine’s Day, Father’s Day, Easter, Mother’s Day and Halloween in rapid succession.
SYes, because the trend that is going crazy in the last few years is to anticipate the celebrations, to be able to anticipate also events, so increasing their promotion time. It seems almost like the anxiety of a Formula one pilot who wants to dub all racers. Only, once dubbed the year, and Christmas, we cannot celebrate it again ten days after because we went ahead and passed by.
Christmas is a great time for events. It increases Guerrilla activities, street marketing has really many opportunities to exercise its creativity, communication agencies get mad every day in pursuit of the latest and unplanned promotions requested by customers. But Christmas is a planned celebration followed, of course, by many other similar ones. All equally special, all equally “event”. And, therefore, I think it risks losing a bit – not only the secular or religious meaning whose sociological territory, frankly, I have no intention to enter – but trivially its commercial sense. If there is no longer a period of break and transition between important and not so important events, it is automatic that we invest less, although perhaps more continuously; but losing the perceived exceptional, investment decreases. It becomes common. And an event is something exceptional. Event comes from the Latin ex-venire, jump out, out for something. But, in this continuity, we risk drowning in everyday normality. Conversely, Christmas is exceptional.
Maybe we should make a reflection on the theme. And come back to celebrate it as it deserves, giving it real relief. I believe we all would gain from it (even in commercial terms).