The second half of the essay. Ho ho ho.
Both stores showed plenty of evidence for both the secularization of the sacred and the sacralization of consumerism (Einstein 18). The inescapable approach of the holiday season has amplified this two-way cultural drift, and the resultant tension has reached a fever pitch of spiritual confusion as the two stores struggle to maintain their respective identities and keep their cashiers busy. Though the concept of Christmas as a patently spiritual holiday is a fairly recent phenomenon, both stores are forced to deal with the holiday season in remarkably dissimilar ways.
In the entryway of Wal-Mart stood a massive Christmas tree under a banner proudly proclaiming “Merry Christmas.” Based on this, I expected to find massive sections in every department devoted to Christmas, but this was not the case. For example, the DVD section had only one shelf of Christmas movies (including explicitly religious works like The Nativity Story and The Passion of the Christ, and Christmas movies with a “spiritual” but not religious orientation like Home Alone and the spectacularly titled TV special Emmet Otter’s Jug Band Christmas), while the CD section featured only one lonely rack of Christmas albums. Instead, the vast majority of holiday-themed merchandise was concentrated in special areas set aside for Christmas, most notably “The Christmas Shop.” The Christmas Shop was converted from what was previously Wal-Mart’s greenhouse area. In the air was a pungent potpourri of cinnamon and clove, and on the shelves were all the implements necessary for a successful Christmas morning—snow globes, ribbons, bows, boxes, ornaments. By so stringently separating Christmas from their other products, I got the sense that Wal-Mart was trying to convince me that they genuinely believed in Christmas—and, therefore, that buying my wrapping paper from them would be some kind of religious transaction. Because Wal-Mart markets Christmas this way, the consumer is allowed a glimpse into Wal-Mart’s religious values, and she finds that more than simply marketing religion, Wal-Mart turns marketing into religion.
Target, on the other hand, favors a more indecisive approach; instead of “Merry Christmas,” the store favored less confrontational signs that read “Happy Holidays” or “Season’s Greetings.” To Target, Christmas is more of a common language of American culture that happens to move merchandise than it is a way for the store to affirm its religious identity—hence the Hello Kitty tree ornaments and the proliferation of artificially colored red and green food products. However, this allows Target to spread its Christmas cheer all throughout the store instead of containing it to specified areas as Wal-Mart does. When I visited, every department was dotted with holiday displays. One showcase, under the sign “Give jolly stocking stuffers,” included a hodgepodge of reasonably priced miscellany, such as “extreme” stress balls (for the decidedly unjolly member of the family), harmonicas, drinking straw eyeglasses, and so on. Another display towards the back of the store featured various picture books about Christmas, but only one of them actually appeared to relate the nativity story: Little Town of Bethlehem (“Learn about baby Jesus—Discover the miracle of love—Bound and printed in China—Batteries NOT included”). If Wal-Mart has consecrated cash in the spirit of Christmas, then Target has made a sales pitch using a holy context; and as the “secular and sacred continue to blur” (Einstein 18) in increasingly creative and unusual ways, the consumer is left with a light wallet and a dazed head.
One of the central conclusions in Einstein’s book is that “[R]eligion has to be marketed in today’s culture in order to remain relevant” (60). Due to the considerable presence of “faith brands” (92-94) in both stores (but especially in Wal-Mart), this conclusion initially seems solid; however, I cannot help but find Einstein’s argument reductive. It seems equally likely to me that the supercenters have to market religion and spirituality to achieve their economic aspirations. Conceiving of the relationship between marketing and religion as a discursive process (just as Einstein conceives of the interplay of the secular and the sacred) is a much more satisfying explanation for the mutually beneficial symbiosis Einstein proposes in Brands of Faith (74). If this makes supercenters like Wal-Mart and Target seem almost like living beings, then the items on their shelves are like neurons carrying their thoughts, which collectively reveal their self-image. The shoppers, then, become mirrors through which the stores see and understand themselves. Every beep of the barcode reader is more than a sale—when we buy, we are collaborating in a slowly unfolding creation.
