Disneyfied, Hallmarkized and Un-dividualized

Everybody likes holidays, some more than others - some holidays more than others, some people more than others. Personally, I hate Valentine’s Day but love Thanksgiving. Don’t care about Easter but adore Halloween. Fine, right? Wrong –o. We are supposed to gush and give and spend equally for every, and I mean every occasion. The traditional ones, the ones we grew up with, and a whole boatload of recently invented ones that are now mandated.

Of course it’s lovely to get a card from your grandson, but does it mean as much when it’s dictated by the newly minted Grandmother’s Day as it would if it was just a spontaneous gift? It could be argued – and I do – that this kind of enforced celebration undermines real, emotionally driven gestures of affection. Another step in the devaluation of honest feelings replaced with the sound of a credit card being processed.

It isn’t clear just how long it has been creeping up on us, this plague of greed and advertising and demand, but every month there seems to be another reason to send a card, buy a gift, celebrate, celebrate, celebrate! Which literally translates into “spend, spend, spend!”

And if you dare to walk by that Hallmark display or the oh-so-cute stuffed or porcelain Disney figures wearing adorable holiday slogans around their necks, then you start to suspect you are a grouch. A Grinch. The worst kind of selfish, uncaring scrooge who ever had the nerve to not reach for a gift to buy.

It may be paranoia, but I don’t think so. Disney and Hallmark have finally overtaken reality and created our 21st century standards of expectation. What we think, how we express our feelings, when we are supposed to jump up and consume. Pavlov’s dogs, remember them?

You’d just better get that heart-shaped box of candies or that eternity diamond pendant she has been expecting, and the gifts had better be there promptly on February 14th. Or else. Kids are even easier targets for this kind of marketing and branding. That exact hot pink Bratz slut doll that your granddaughter wants had better be there under the tree. Or else.

Or else what? Hearts will be broken, expectations dashed? The Pavlov human who is expecting that particular gift on that particular day will certainly face shame and humiliation when other people, the ones who did get what they were supposed to get, will not just feel sorry for them? They may just shun them altogether. Oh, come on.

What happened to our brains and our hearts? What happened to the proud individualism that was the defining quality of this country of ours? When did we become so easily led to the store and willing to purchase what we are being told is “just the right” gift?

And it’s not just holidays. We’d just as soon go to Las Vegas to experience Manhattan or Paris or Venice as trek all the way to the real thing. After all, in Vegas, the streets are clean, the people are polite and correctly costumed, and they speak English! The buildings are sparkling, the bathrooms are tidy, the art looks great (and so well lit!) and it’s all so, so almost real. Why bother to take that long uncomfortable trip and deal with the anxiety of being in a foreign city or country when we can get a reasonable - no, a better facsimile right here?

Who coined the phrase “a nation of sheep?” Whoever it was, hats off to his or her cynical, forward-thinking and sadly realistic view of our society. Baa, baa, baa, just lead us to the musical greeting card and the right gift-wrapping and the Thomas Kinkade villages where cobblestone streets try to give the illusion that our world is innocent and secure, kind and clean.

Yup, that’ll do it. If we buy and buy and buy into this rapacious machine that tells us what to think while relieving us of our coin, maybe we’ll all be just fine. With enough armor of brand names and stuff, enough non-stop celebration, enough bright techno-recreations of what used to be the real world, we’ll all be just fine. And so insidiously regulated. Yeah, right.