By Jacob Peller, Opinions Editor

With the holiday season coming to an end, it’s time to pack up all the Santa dolls and Coca-Cola polar bears and finally put all this rampant consumerism behind us. At least that is how it should have been before companies decided that they don’t have enough of our money yet. So they started these “after holiday sales,” which keep the ugliest parts of Black Friday shopping alive all year long. It’s no surprise that we as human beings are creatures of habit. It’s how we live day by day, so it’s also unsurprising that some people have found a way to cash in on this impulse with “great deals.” The fact of the matter is we as shoppers are mindless zombies when it comes to consumerism. We value things more than people. That’s why we can hear a story like “old man trampled to death in shopping rage” and not feel like there was a loss of life. We’ve come to expect this sort of behavior during the holidays. The question is, when did that become the message of the season? When you’re a child, you’re told that this is the season of giving; that we should all come together and love of fellow man. To a child, this is a time when relatives visit and you get box upon box of presents for you to tear into. Cost was never a consideration, nor hatred or anything negative. That’s what the holidays were about; that being good had its rewards. At some point however, we confused the message that being good equals deserving of a PS4 or a new TV. Once you convince the common person that it’s more important that your kid has a specific item instead of just being grateful for receiving anything, then you have officially twisted the kind hearted message that this season was supposed to be about.

Not that there is anything new about any of this. We’ve used children and the memories of our childhood as weapons in our product placement since the very beginning. For example, I spent my childhood reading Dr. Seuss books. I loved the way they could captivate a child’s imagination while still being educational about certain topics of interest. The most notable of these was The Lorax, a story about the dangers of business taking too much from nature without considering the effects it has on everyone else. This story always stuck with me as it made it feel like you were the messenger meant to spread the message of “unless.” This was a very clear message of understanding that business takes what it wants and help kids to understand the difficulties of making a moral decision balancing what we want versus what we need. Stuff is nice but trees are essential. This was a powerful message that stuck with me as I grew up. So imagine my surprise when in 2012 Universal released Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax, a modernized retelling of the classic story for a newer generation. I thought that this was great, but alas like a M. Night Shyamalan movie, it sucked! Not the story itself. I don’t care if they want to add a love story, because apparently you can’t have a movie without a love plot. I’m angry at the commercialism. Like I said, this is a story about being wary of the growth of business. The Lorax is the voice of the trees; the ones who can’t speak for themselves. You are supposed to trust his word as the moral right in this situation. And yet, his image was put all over the place supporting things counter to the very message The Lorax was about. I’m referring specifically to the Mazda commercials that aired around the movie’s release which gave the “Lorax stamp of approval” for this car. I can already hear some people argue that the car is environmentally friendly. Maybe it is, but by using the Lorax to convey the message, you confuse the ideals that he stood for, which brings us back to my message of the holidays.

As the New Year fast approaches and we look towards making some changes that better us, I recommend that we all take a moment to appreciate what we have instead of what we could have. The businesses and corporations want you to become mindless zombies who will buy anything with a “sale tag” attached to it, and they’re willing to use any method to convince you to buy it. Instead of falling into this well-oiled scam machine, we should take a page from The Lorax and care more about each other than material need. “Because unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.” ~ Dr. Seuss