Beyond adverts, what is the evidence that people are spending more and more on Christmas and getting into debt?
I always reckon that peak Christmas, from the spending point of view was in the late 1980s and it has been very slowly in decline since. Yes, of course it is a big festival and people are out spending, but the retail sector is doom laden at the moment, November was their worst Christmas sales month for years - and most of the big High Street retailers have big online presences as well.
The only thing that is growing is lights on the outside of houses, which is why trees and lights now go up in early December. That is because of the introduction of LED lights, which are cheap to produce and cheap to run, compared with what came before.
I can remember people complaining about the commercialisation of Christmas in the 1950s