End-of-year festivities and Consumerism: How to Rescue What Truly Matters.
Every year, as winter approaches, Europe is filled with celebrations and festive events. From All Saints’ Day and Saint Nicholas to the Immaculate Conception, Advent, Christmas, Boxing Day, New Year’s Eve, New Year’s Day and Epiphany, along with the more recent arrivals from the United States such as Halloween, Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
The calendar has become an uninterrupted race of stimuli, lights, music and promotions, where the original meaning of the holidays fades into a constant flow of consumption.
These celebrations, born in different European countries, reflect a wide variety of religious, cultural and family traditions that, over time, have blended and become globalised. Today, from late October to early January, they coexist in a single season, creating a succession of dates where commercial pressure often seems stronger than the intention behind each holiday.
In many European countries, a season that once evoked reflection, generosity and togetherness has turned into a global shop window. Streets and shopfronts are decorated weeks in advance, commercial messages multiply, and the tone of the celebrations feels increasingly dictated by marketing rather than by the values that supposedly inspired them.
Everything invites us to take part, to buy, to display a happiness that often feels forced. This overexposure not only empties the holidays of meaning but can also lead to fatigue, frustration or even disillusionment.
Rethinking How We Celebrate
Beyond criticism, a reflection is needed: what role do we want to play as individuals in this machinery? The holidays themselves are not the problem, but the way we live them. Remembering their essence —meeting, caring, the value of shared time— is a quiet form of resistance against consumerist uniformity.
Small Gestures That Restore Meaning
Rediscovering the value of the simple can be a good place to start. Sharing a home-cooked meal, writing a letter, lighting a candle with intention, or giving time to someone who needs it are gestures that bring authenticity back to this season. They require no spending, only a different attitude: focusing on what truly matters.
We can also choose more personal and sustainable gestures: organising a Secret Santa with reused or handmade items, giving a plant as a gift, preparing homemade sweets, or donating to a charity in someone’s name. Inviting someone who would otherwise spend the celebration alone, or showing kindness to a neighbour or acquaintance who is often forgotten, may be more valuable than any purchased gift. Switching off mobile phones during dinner or afterwards—and genuinely listening to those around us—might be the most revolutionary gesture of all.
Every small decision counts: favouring what lasts over what is disposable, what’s thoughtful over what’s impulsive, what’s meaningful over what’s imposed. These are quiet choices, but together they change the tone of the holidays… and perhaps the tone of our lives too.
Celebrating with Awareness
Celebrating can still be beautiful, even necessary, as long as it regains its human meaning. Perhaps it isn’t about giving everything up, but consciously choosing what to keep, what to change and what to leave behind.
The holidays will not disappear, but they can change —if we change the way we live them.
The DIDIER&co team wishes you a very happy holiday season. We will begin the new year with the same enthusiasm to continue helping both foreigners in Spain and Spaniards who need to communicate in other languages, whether for personal or professional reasons. We want to help you settle in Spain and overcome language and bureaucratic barriers. With more than fifteen years of experience, we provide advice, assistance and interpreting in Spanish, English, French and soon Dutch. Spanish medical interpretation and medical translation is our speciality. Whether you are a resident or a tourist, we support you when you need to see doctors in Spain. Our aim is to make your life easier.
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