This article is from WeChat public account: see over (ID: ikanlixiang) , author: Liang said, the subject map from: Oriental IC
The current consumer culture creates an urgent need for each of us to increase our income. The money that every one of us wants to earn today is far more than meeting one’s most basic needs.
This kind of consumer culture has also completely changed the meaning of the festival we used to relax.
The crazy “Double 11” is coming soon.
In recent years, in addition to the “Double 11”, there are various new festivals promoted by Internet shopping. These festivals are no exception, the main goal is still hope that you can buy more.
These festivals are also subject to many criticisms. One of the most common ways to say that they are artificial festivals is unnatural, no history, no tradition. But really, strictly speaking, is there any festival that is “non-artificial”?
1. Even traditional festivals are embedded with a layer of consumer color
Even if it is the ancient cultures of the world, the festivals developed around the two natural phenomena of the winter solstice and the summer solstice, although based on natural phenomena, are formulated as festivals, before and after that day. Doing some special ceremonies or activities is always created by our human beings, right? So there are no festivals that are not artificial.
If the festival is not traditional, perhaps the new festival we created today will be regarded as a “traditional” festival after another ten or twenty years.
Of course, some people will criticize that these festivals are entirely for consumption, but only encourage us to consume.
But if you think about it again, whether it is a festival with traditional characteristics or an imported festival, is it not a holiday-oriented festival?
The simplest example is Christmas. This festival with a strong religious background in the West has basically become a disguised “Valentine’s Day” and a consumer festival for shopping as a gift.
Even in the West, where Christmas is still considered a major holiday for New Year, there must be a lot of consumer action around Christmas.
And those consumers can just build up a kind of Christmas atmosphere and feelings, and even after a long time, everyone is not interested, the connotation and essence of Christmas has been replaced by a set of consumer culture.
So, today we have a holiday like “Double 11”, if it is artificial, non-traditional, or it is completely consumer-oriented, to discuss whether the festival is correct or not, Whether or not it should be passed, I am afraid these statements may not be valid.
In fact, many places around the world have some artificial consumption festivals like “Double 11”. The simplest example is the “Black Friday” in the US(Black Friday).
The so-called “Black Friday” is actually the Friday after Thanksgiving Day in the United States. What are you doing on this day? Since 1952, this day has been considered to mark the official beginning of the Christmas shopping season.
This is also the most important and busy day for major businesses in the year. They will start to reduce discounts and dump goods, and encourage consumers to make shopping. A buying spree.
Over time, beautythe country’s “Black Friday” has even become a barometer of the US consumer index and even the economic line. If the performance of “Black Friday” is not good this year, everyone will say that this year’s economy does not look very good.
2. There used to be a holiday, you can’t work, you can’t consume, but you can have a good time
If you say “Double 11” is a holiday, then let’s go back and discuss, what is the nature of the festival? Or what is the festival used for?
We usually think that today, the festival is with a commemorative nature, such as commemorating Qu Yuan, commemorating the mythical ancestors in the myths to drive the beasts and so on. But there is a festival form that most of us have forgotten today. This is a very old festival form. This festival form is a “taboo day.”
What is the taboo date? It means that nothing can be done on this day, don’t do it. All your daily activities will stop on this day. The familiar examples of this taboo day may be the Sabbath rooted in Jewish culture.
I have experienced the Sabbath in Israel. In the home of a traditional Jewish monk, on that day, all the electrical appliances in the house should be turned off. There is no need for electric lights to use only candles or oil lamps, that is, their Sabbath can not do many things. Even the modern industrial civilization of electricity use is subject to restrictions.
However, the Sabbath was not invented by the Jews themselves, the first written statute in human history, and the taboo day in the ancient Babylonian Code of Babylon, and now we find the earliest A basis for this may be the calendar from ancient Egypt.
The Egyptian calendar of these four or five thousand years ago has detailed the annual taboo days. In those taboo days, people can’t travel, they can’t drink, they can’t work, they can’t do everything they do everyday. thing.
Today you can still see some traces of taboo days. For example, in some countries in Europe, such as Germany and Austria, you may find that most of the shops there are not open on Sundays. This often makes many foreign tourists very uncomfortable. On Sunday, even if you want to go out and find a place to eat and buy things, it doesn’t seem to work. So what can you do that day?
In general, you can only go to museums, to places like parks and galleries, and the crowds are crowded. It seems that everyone does not do anything on Sundays, but simply go to the park for picnics, kite flying, or go to art. The museum looks at the exhibition.
This kind of idea actually has the concept of taboo day, although you can’t work, can’t consume, but you can relax.
Only doing some leisure activities on a specific date is actually a very traditional European culture. In the Middle Ages of Europe, their Sunday is to go to Mass, to go to church for religious activities, but not to let you work, but that day can also be entertained, such as horse racing, chess, singing and dancing, including drinking, on the one hand Very secular, on the other hand very sacred.
The combination of sacred things and secular entertainment in one day is the origin of this weekend culture in Europe.
The taboo day became a tradition like Sunday.But such a tradition is not without distinction in European history or Western history. For example, we know that the earliest foreign European colonies in the United States, especially the colonization of the English-speaking world, are some of the past Puritans in Britain. These Puritans are very convinced of their biblical traditions and believe that they must live a life that a Christian should have. So they are not in favor of a variety of recreational activities on Sundays like the decaying Catholic world.
They think that they should do some religious activities on Sundays. For example, in 1610, in the Virginia colonies of North America, there was an explicit stipulation that Sunday was not allowed to work, no leisure, and all people in the morning had to go to church to pray, if not come once I was warned, I would be whipped if I didn’t come twice, I wouldn’t go to church three times, and I still work at home on Sunday, and I would still be punished by the death penalty.
Of course, although the law is written in such a way, in fact, very few people are executed because they work on Sundays or do not go to church. It is not uncommon for such things to happen.
If you are interested in what I just said, I can introduce you to an interesting little book. The author of this book is actually quite famous. Toss Risinski (Witold Rybczynski), he is Professor Emeritus of Urban Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, USA. This book is Waiting. For the Weekend, the Chinese translation is “On Leisure”, which talks about the origin of many festival cultures.
“On Leisure”
3. The originality of the festival – abnormal, subversive order
See here you canCan doubt, why do I suddenly pull from the “double 11” to the festival culture? In fact, whether the festival of rest is a taboo festival, a festival of leisure nature, or a festival with a sacred nature, they all have one thing in common – it is not a “normal” time. .
On that day or a few days, we humans will enter a non-daily state. Under this non-daily state, we are separated from the world, and we are broken with the original daily life and the normal running track of society. Open.
This is why there are some festival carnival traditions around the world, what is the carnival? In essence, the carnival is not so happy, but more importantly, it is necessary to subvert the social order and pull down many of the things that were originally high and have something different.
Because this day is the day of the carnival, it is the day of subversion of the secular order, so many daily taboos can be allowed. This day, the people will be happy to laugh, so that everyone can be in daily life. The pressures accumulated under the normal social order are erupting.
However, today, our holiday can still be regarded as a “non-daily time”, I am afraid it is difficult to talk about, especially after the industrial revolution, all our leisure time, including weekends, is often very busy. ,why?
Because of the industrial revolution, we also entered an era of mass consumption.
This day or these two or three days, we are not doing nothing. On the contrary, we are very busy, busy with all kinds of activities, even if it is just playing sports, it also contains various Kinds of consumer behavior, such as buying exquisite, special equipment and so on.
It can be said that the entire consumer culture has brought about fundamental changes to these traditional festivals.
4. Consumer culture, completely changing the time we spend leisurely
When you meet the holiday season, what we have to do is to consume, and what should we do on normal days outside the festival? That is to work hard.
Today, festivals and workdays, non-daily and daily, the main content of these contrasts has become consumption and supply – usually we have to work hard to make money, and on the day of leisure, we try to consume.
This seems like a paradox.