Commerce Didn’t Corrupt Christmas, But Kept It Alive
(ANALYSIS) Every December, the same chorus returns — pastors, pundits and pious influencers lamenting that Christmas has been “commercialized.” That somewhere between the shepherds and the self-checkout lane, we traded our souls for stuff.
But that story’s too simple. Christianity, at its core, has never been allergic to the material — it was founded on it. God didn’t descend as an idea. He came wrapped in flesh, born not in abstraction but in a feeding trough. The Incarnation sanctified substance — stone and soil, blood and bone. Matter mattered because the Almighty took its shape.
Gift-giving, then, isn’t a betrayal of Christmas. In truth, it’s a reenactment of it. The gold of the Magi wasn’t greed but grandeur. It recognized that something sacred deserves something splendid. To give well is to echo Bethlehem — to make love visible, grace tangible. The problem is pretense, not presents. It’s when generosity becomes performance, and the spirit of giving becomes a selfie opportunity. The three wise men offered treasure; the modern man offers trending clips.
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Still, capitalism gets cast as the seasonal villain, accused of hijacking the manger. But without it, there’d be no tinsel, no turkey, no train home.
This holiday season, Adobe expects U.S. online sales to hit $253.4 billion — a 5.3% rise compared to last year.
However, the Christmas we romanticize —the glowing hearth, the heaped table, the candlelit Mass — wasn’t born of poverty, but of prosperity. Commerce didn’t corrupt Christmas. In many ways, it kept it alive. The carolers had jobs. The feast required trade. Even Charles Dickens’s London depended on coin to make its cheer.
Yes, the malls are manic. The lights blink like they’re arguing with the power grid. Somewhere, someone is elbowing a stranger for the last Labubu while “O Holy Night” plays faintly over the insanity. It’s absurd — but it’s also unmistakably human, our clumsy attempt to make the intangible tangible.
For all its sins, capitalism democratized that joy. It let the factory worker, not just the king, place something packaged and precious beneath the tree. A child’s Christmas morning doesn’t care about the GDP — he or she cares that someone thought of them.
We forget, too, that Christianity is an economy of exchange. For God so loved the world that He gave… — a sentence as transactional as it is transcendent. Grace was costly. The Cross was the ultimate purchase. Salvation was, in a sense, the first and final act of divine commerce. Capitalism, at its best, borrows from that same principle: Voluntary exchange, freely entered, mutually beneficial. When it works, it honors agency, not exploitation. It treats man not as a serf of the state but as a steward of his own choices.
Of course, that’s the ideal. The reality often looks more like Black Friday in Babylon—greed dressed in garland, indulgence on installment. But even this gluttony hints at something theological. Our excesses parody our hunger for meaning. The overstuffed stockings, the endless ads, the shopping carts groaning with things we’ll forget by the first week of January. They’re distorted echoes of an ancient impulse: the desire to fill what’s empty.
The tragedy isn’t that we want too much, but that we settle for so little. We reach for what’s nearest — Lululemon leggings, Louis Vuitton bags, LED mirrors — mistaking it for fulfillment. What we crave isn’t more, but meaning, and we’ve forgotten the difference.
That’s not the market’s fault — it’s ours.
“Keep Christ in Christmas,” the bumper stickers say. Fair enough. But let’s keep capitalism there too—not the shop-’til-you-drop parody, but the spirit that made generosity go global. The same system that churns out plastic Santas and polyester sweaters also creates the abundance that feeds the poor, funds charities, and flies families home. There’s something sacred in that circulation.
The early Christians understood this balance. They sold their possessions not because trade was evil, but because love demanded fairness. Commerce and compassion were not opposites — they were obligations. They broke bread, built tables, and pressed wine. Work was worship. Labor was prayer made visible. Even in the Book of Acts, the ledgers came before the loaves; stewardship came before generosity. You couldn’t give what you didn’t first grow, make, or earn.
At its best, capitalism still bears that lineage, a system built on trust, discipline and the promise of renewal. It’s imperfect, but so were the first markets in Jerusalem, where barter met brotherhood and grace met grain.
So yes, buy your gifts. Wrap them well. Just don’t worship the wrapping. When you hand someone a sweater, a book, or a bottle of overpriced rum, remember — you’re giving meaning form, not flaunting virtue. If capitalism is the body, Christ is the pulse that gives it purpose.
After all, what is Christmas without a little sacred spending? God gave. Man received. And ever since, December’s been good for business.
John Mac Ghlionn is a researcher and essayist. He covers psychology and social relations. His writing has appeared in places such as UnHerd, The US Sun and The Spectator World.