Did you have a hunch this year that Christmas was (unnecessarily) less Christmasy and even less festive than previous years? Yes, I'm talking about in addition to the year's lockdowns and restrictions, and the extra holiday restrictions on family. Kind of like how when people were told to social distance , so they emotionally distanced as well and stopped smiling or talking.
I complained to one of the grocery stores in my area from the customer satisfaction survey on the receipt about the lack of Christmas décor and music. In response a display of wrapped presents appeared, but off in a back corner by the lotto and bathrooms. They did however, have fresh Christmas trees and sprigs of fir and pine, so I picked up a sprig on Solstice Eve.
In my town, I saw depressing things like outdoor light shows cancelled, no Christmas carols playing in the grocery store, no jingle bells jingling because Salvation Army went cashless.I saw one regular salvation army cash collection with a dad and sons (unfortunately in masks), but all other jingle bells just replaced by a poster with a stupid barcode in your face.
I also noticed that the main drag had a pathetic display of half burnt-out light strings from the dollar store, robbing everyone else of the inventory for home-use. Most businesses aren't trying at all to be festive like normal, and customers aren't happy to be holiday shopping, they're just anxiously stuffing crap into their carts trying to bandage over their pain with material goods and try to make the best of it.
Two things scare me about the lack of Christmas festiveness. First, it scares me that we take away extra festivities without good reason in a time when we need it more than ever. Sadly the reason we need Christmas more than ever is the reason being used to keep it away from us. The other thing that scares me is the gradualness of it that nobody else notices. For example, take a look at Canada Dry's Christmas Tweets announcing their product packaging for the 2019 holidays compared to 2020.
Or how about Coca-Cola's Christmas Ad this year? The whole thing was almost completely void of Christmas theme and even snow, except for where the main character makes an epic but random journey around the world. What it's not void of is subliminal social engineering; for example, there was more a focus of windmills then of Christmas, to usher in the technological control grid. Coca-Cola doesn't show you windmills because it cares about sustainable energy just like it doesn't feature Black people because it cares about equality.
Summary:
The COVID Scamdemic is being used as an excuse to cancel cultural holidays like Christmas. Corporations play a key role in the power structure in this scamdemic as they have great influence to do social engineering. People seem to be celebrating unnecessarily less in a time when they need it even more, but the reason we need it more and the reason we can't have it are on in the same.
Individuals are probably less festive because they're depressed. However, there is a remarkable lack of festiveness on the part of businesses and corporations that seems unreasonable. For example, does playing Christmas songs on the radio or having visual Christmas displays really interfere with social distancing? A lot of this year's Christmas packaging was barely even winter-themed, let alone Christmasy, kind of like one of those ambiguous optical illusion - is it Christmas-themed or not? Once it's faded and ambiguous, it's almost a few steps until it's gone.