Christian feast days like Christmas and Easter used to be periods of reflection for mankind. It was a period when Christians looked back at their lives and thought of ways to appease God for their wrong doings, a time when they returned to God. But this Christian culture has been changed by the technology of advertising. Religious leaders have constlantly protested the way the commercial world has debased Christian feast days for their own profits. The big business firms have taken over these holidays so that from their true nature of humility and contrition are now an invitation to spend more, to involve in all kinds of extravagances at home and socially, to give way to all forms of weakness and vanity. Christmas for so many people now is not about the coming of Christ into the world to die for the sins of mankind but a time to give and receive gifts, a time for big business boom and vacations. Everyday we are bombarded by images on TV and the Internet encouraging us to spend more and more. We receive mails advertising sales, Bill boards at every corner of the street preaching the same message of spend! spend! spend! and the radio blaring in every store encouraging us to try out a new product. The advert makes you feel that if you dont buy the product that is advertised you are not an American. The combination of graphics and sounds of todays advertisements have a way of implanting themselves in the brain so that a housewife that goes shopping shops the way she has been advised to shop on the TV, and she prefers a product that she has seen one time or the other in a TV advert than a product that hasn�t been advertised. During the advert, they make you feel like you are the only person that doesn't own the product . Most Christians now go to church to show off their cars and clothes, and to see the latest fashions in the market. The philosopher Quelfec once wrote

"It must be said that the behavior of those today called Christians betrays a certain feverishness, under the influence of advancing technology, and a spread of materialist tendencies which is altogether to be condemned." 4

This is due to a great force of materialism that is enhanced by technology; this has made the Christian more materialistic and has drawn him farther and farther away from God".

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4 Henri Quelfec Technology and religion
New York, Hawthorn Books 1964 p32.