pumpkinstrokemarrow

First, the US is about midway in the festive binge league, while the UK is close to the top, whether measured by spend per head or by spend as a proportion of GDP. Places like China, Korea and Israel come bottom. Some of the places which are presently low are climbing as they get richer and start to spend more on their own versions of Christmas.

Second, giving to US educational establishments is well organised, with more or less published tariffs. So for $10m I can get Harvard to include a name of my choice in the title of an existing job in perpetuity. For $5m for 10 years. While for $15m I get to supply the whole job title. So I could have the 'Pumpkinstrokemarrow Regius Chair of Comparative Joycean Studies'. There is another tariff card for buildings, but they tend to come rather dear. One could of course settle for a less prestigious uni., perhaps the one one went to oneself, in one's home state.

Third, giving gift tokens is one way to increase the value to the recipient of gifts. But it seems that only about 90% of the value of such gifts is redeemed and there are interesting shennanighans dealing with the balance. In Delaware, the balance reverts to the state after a decent interval. Then it seems that accountants get quite excited about when to score the purchase of gift tokens in the sales figures, with the vote going to scoring when the token is redeemed, rather than when it was bought, thus depressing estimates of festive spending.

Fourth, people having been moaning about the commercialisation of Christmas for almost as long as there has been commerce.

Fifth, a way ahead might be charity gift tokens. The idea is that I buy a token for you and you get to choose which charity gets the dosh. Things are so arranged that if you don't bother, there are defaults set up, so it does get to some charity or other. I rather like this one. Everybody gets to feel good and hopefully the charity makes sensible use of the proceeds.