UBC October 2026 - When Did Christmas Become a Production?

I came across a post recently that made me stop scrolling.

A family, apparently, has a Christmas tradition: every year they travel to a different country for a Christmas photoshoot. Last year was Budapest, Hungary. This year they're going to Wrocław, Poland, and Mom is looking for recommendations for a stunning studio.

A studio.

I'm sorry, but... why are we travelling internationally to have Christmas pictures taken in a room?

I mean, I can totally get behind, “Let's visit a new city and its beautiful Christmas market.”

I could actually come up with a few destinations I'd recommend.

But a studio?

Who cares where the studio is located?

It made me think about all the other things people invest so much time, energy and money in around the holidays. Things that increasingly feel like elaborate productions rather than simply spending a nice time with family and friends.

And that makes me a little sad.

Is it a question of keeping up with the Joneses?

Who has the nicest matching PJs? And please, don't stop at the humans. The pets deserve one as well.

Who stages the perfect Christmas morning? The presents artfully arranged under the tree, the children in above mentioned matching pajamas, hot chocolate in matching mugs, everyone miraculously photogenic at 7 a.m., and preferably nobody touches anything until Mom has filmed the whole thing? Because apparently even opening presents now needs a content strategy.

Whose Christmas card is the most extravagantly arranged? Never mind that all it will say is, “Happy Holidays from our family to yours.”

When did it become expected that adults surprise each other with elaborate Advent calendars? Not the charming, individual ones that show you put some thought into them, but the ones advertised online; preferably themed, of course.

Who manages to recreate the fancy Christmas-themed charcuterie board seen on Pinterest? Never mind that all the kids actually want are chicken nuggets.

Photo Credit: Nourish + Nestle

Who almost suffers a nervous breakdown because decorating two dozen different Christmas cookies looked so much easier on TikTok than it turns out to be in real life?

Who falls prey to packaging perfectionism, buying color-coordinated premium wrapping paper, silk ribbons and handmade tags? The result: hours of folding in secret, with millimeter precision, only for the work of art to be brutally torn apart in exactly 1.5 seconds on Christmas Eve.

And for whom, exactly, is the high-stakes gingerbread architecture? After days of meticulous labor, you finally have a massive candy mansion. You photograph it. You post it. Everyone admires it. And sometime in January, you throw away what was once perfectly edible gingerbread.

Photo Credit: Tastes better from scratch

Then there is what in German we call a Materialschlacht, literally a “battle of stuff.” It’s what happens when Christmas turns into an unofficial competition over who can buy, wrap, decorate and give the most. More presents, more decorations, more elaborate everything. Nobody actually declared a contest, but somehow everybody is competing anyway.

A dozen presents per child. Why?

Children already have more toys than they can possibly play with. Yet somehow, every year, the pile has to be bigger than the year before.

At what point did “Christmas magic” become synonymous with more stuff?

And all that stuff has to go somewhere eventually.

Of course, none of these things is inherently bad. If you genuinely enjoy making an elaborate gingerbread mansion at midnight, go for it. I mean, I may launch yet another year of Elf and the Shelf shenanigans, If matching pajamas make your family happy, wear them proudly. If you love creating the perfect Christmas card, I'm not going to take that away from you.

But somewhere along the way, I wonder whether we started producing Christmas instead of experiencing it.

Because surely the point was never to create the most photogenic Christmas, the most elaborate Christmas, or the Christmas with the most stuff.

Wasn't it simply supposed to be about spending time with people we love?

Maybe I'm just old-fashioned. I don't even claim the original purpose of Christmas has been lost.

But I just don't understand why people need to fly to Poland to stand in somebody else's Christmas studio.

So I'm curious: when you strip away the presents, the decorations, the photos, the perfect food and all the Christmas “must-dos”... what does Christmas actually mean to you?