As marketing campaigns have transformed Christmas from a celebration of selfless giving and cherished family bonding into a festive economic stimulus day, the 89th installment of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade serves as the quintessential embodiment of American consumerism culture.
Another year of this grandiose event has come and passed, as the latest annual celebration marks the continuation of a troublesome trend.
Animated balloon characters resembling popular cartoon and action figures, decorative floats, exuberant performers, hype celebrity appearances and frequent product placements personify the yearly Macy's holiday celebration as corporate sponsors have hijacked a parade of holiday spirits and transformed it into a three-hour interpersonal and interactive billboard.
This showcase of eclectic and decorative elements concurrently galavanting through the streets of New York is the perfect product and brand display to showcase to the millions of Americans who suffer from chronic impulse purchasing.
Thanksgiving immediately precedes the notorious Black Friday, as we switch from a holiday that grants America a socially permissible mulligan on gluttony, to the Hunger Games of bargain hunting and speed shopping.
The extravagance of the Macy's Parade is a perfect pivot from a tryptophan-induced coma caused by binge eating, to an epidemic of binge shopping characterized by a seething, insatiable appetite to pummel our peers in a ferocious mall fight for limited discount items -- all for the sake of gift-giving Christmas generosity.
Macy's Thanksgiving Parade is an ingenious and sinister technique that simultaneously subtly and overtly advertise products immediately preceding the holiday shopping sprees that swarm American malls.
Rather than initiate passive, impersonal television advertisements, companies inflate oversized figures to tug at the heartstrings of innocent children in order to balloon their profits. America's youth are suckered into demanding their parents buy them their favorite action figure or see the movie that these characters impeccably resemble.
It's the perfect way to lure the festive joy of Americans to participate in an event that kick starts an avaricious culture that sucks the soul out of Christmas by turning the holiday spirit into holiday shopping lists.
The glitz and glamor of this three-hour pomp pageant is a devious plot to divert the average consumer from the cold reality of the Parade's embodiment of the invasive materialism that persistently plagues Christmas season.
Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade isn't a festive event; it's a prolonged commercial that manipulates families into buying products they don't need. These corporate executives might as well dress as Santa, force themselves down people's chimneys and dangle Christmas presents from a fishing rod right in front of America's children.
But a whopping 50 million Americans watch and partake in an event that embodies the vanity and covetous aspects of American culture despite a strong national sentiment that criticizes the materialization of Christmas.
This mindless, nationwide indulge to seasonal consumerism, ignited by the iridescent glamor of contrived entertainment, places greater emphasis on completing people's wish lists rather than using the time to appreciate the unique and special presence of friends and family.
This parade has taken everything beautiful about the holiday season and re-packaged it as an onslaught of toys, movies, cars, apparel and household products that are as lifeless as the forced, choreographed movements of the floats, balloons and dancers that comprise the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade.
It's time Americans really see this event for what it really is, snap out of the shopping spirit and focus on the real values of Thanksgiving and Christmas.