Christmas-Industrial Complex

Overthink

Ellie Anderson, Ph.D. and David Peña-Guzmán, Ph.D.

Philosophy, Society & Culture, Education

4.7 • 549 Ratings

🗓️ 7 December 2021

⏱️ 59 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Happy holidays! As Christmas approaches, the average American prepares to spend nearly $1,000 on presents, decorations, and family feasting. How did an originally religious festival become so caught up in capitalist consumption? What really defines Christmas in an increasingly secular America? This holiday season, David and Ellie try not to be scrooges as they explore the Christmas Industrial Complex. From Hallmark movies to Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, the stories we tell around Christmas can be incredibly varied. In looking at these narratives and more, Ellie and David discuss whether Christmas can be separated from the often heavily capitalist rituals around it. Episode 40.

Works Discussed

NewSong, “The Christmas Shoes”
Megan Garber, “The Cheesy Endurance of the Made-for-TV Holiday Movie”
A New York Christmas Wedding
Daniel J. Boorstin, The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America
Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol
History.com, “Saturnalia”
Mari Ruti, Penis Envy and Other Bad Feelings
Jim Probasco, “Average Cost of American Holiday Spending”
Jonathan Berr, “Hallmark’s Christmas Movies Are Predictably Popular With Viewers”

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, I'm David Pena Guzman.
0:08.6	And I'm Ellie Anderson.
0:10.2	Welcome to Overthink.
0:12.0	The podcast were two friends, who are also professors,
0:15.6	put philosophy in dialogue with the everyday.
0:18.6	Because big ideas are within everyone's reach.
0:29.6	Okay, so I wanted to introduce David to one of my favorite Christmas songs, The Christmas
0:35.0	Shoes.
0:36.4	We can't play the whole thing for you all because that would be like a tenth of our podcast episode time. But let me just set the scene. It's a little boy who is impoverished whose mother is in the hospital and she's probably going to die tonight and he just needs to buy these shoes for her.
0:51.2	Little boy waiting anxiously pacing round like little boys do.
0:59.5	And in his fans he had a pair of shoes.
1:05.8	And his clothes were alone and home.
1:09.6	He was dirty from head to town. This nice man behind home. He was dirty from red to town.
1:13.6	This nice man behind him gives him the extra money,
1:16.6	and he runs to the hospital and gets him to his mom. these shoes for my mama please it's Christmas Eve and these shoes are just her size
1:36.3	could you hurry soon daddy says there's not much time see, she's been sick for quite a while,
1:48.0	and I know these shoes will make her smile,
1:52.0	and I want her to look beautiful
1:55.0	if Mama meets Jesus tonight. David, what do you think of meet Jesus to love.
2:05.4	David, what do you think about this?
2:09.0	So many questions about the narrative arc here.
2:13.3	Like, why does the mother need shoes to meet Jesus?
	...

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