There is plenty of joy in Christmas. Yet this joy cannot be attributed to a single individual in its formation. In other words, the joy of Christmas is not an individual but a social fact. It is constructed through a dominant narrative that is enacted in the interactional sphere. Christmas is therefore not only an ideology but also an enacted ideology, one that depends on what Collins (2004) describes as the interaction rituals. For this ritual to work, we need (1) physical co-presence, (2) a shared focus of attention, (3) a shared mood, and (4) boundaries that separate those who participate in the ritual from those who do not. Through these components, collective emotional energy is generated, symbols acquire their force, and, most importantly, the conditions for social solidarity are produced. It is through ritual that societal meanings are stabilized and made experientially real.

When we speak of Christmas rituals, we usually invoke shopping, gift-giving, and family gatherings. Yet these practices are embedded in a wider ritual constellation that also includes shared meals, temporal rhythms of waiting and celebration, affective expectations of warmth and harmony, moral narratives of generosity, media-driven imaginaries, and subtle normative pressures that define who properly belongs within the celebration and who does not. Christmas is therefore not constituted by a single ritual but by an interaction ritual chain, in which multiple emotionally charged practices combine to produce what is retrospectively experienced as Christmas.

This experience is, however, cumulative, fragile, and unevenly distributed. It does not arise from one decisive moment but from a sequence of interconnected rituals that reinforce one another over time. Decorating the home, purchasing gifts, sharing meals, religious observance, media consumption, and family gatherings function as nodes in this ritual chain, carrying emotional energy forward and intensifying it. When these rituals succeed, they generate continuity, familiarity, and collective meaning, which are condensed into what is commonly labelled the Christmas spirit. But is it a joy or a stress? Or both?

What is for sure is that this spirit is not composed solely of joy or warmth. Christmas is equally saturated with tension, anxiety, and pressure, particularly in the preparatory phase that precedes the celebration itself. Shopping, organizing gatherings, decorating, cooking, and the constant anticipation of getting it right introduce a substantial emotional burden. Stress emerges precisely because the ritual is expected to succeed. The demand that Christmas must feel special, harmonious, and meaningful transforms ritual participation into a test whose outcome appears emotionally consequential.

In a consumerist social order, this pressure is structurally intensified. The promise of Christmas joy becomes increasingly tied to commodified symbols of gifts, decorations, and branded experiences. These symbols do not merely represent Christmas; they function as ritual intensifiers whose perceived adequacy becomes a measure of one’s proper participation in the collective celebration. Failure to provide the right gift, the appropriate meal, or the correct atmosphere risks not only personal disappointment but also a disruption of the interaction ritual itself.

What emerges here is a form of solidarity built on negative emotional energy. Stress, comparison, and fear of insufficiency become shared affective states that bind participants together, even as they undermine the joy the ritual promises. In this sense, consumerism does not dissolve Christmas solidarity; it reconfigures it. Solidarity is no longer produced primarily through shared enjoyment but through shared pressure to conform to a dominant script of festive success. We are collectively expected to be happy and collectively anxious about achieving it.

In this respect, Christmas commodities operate close to what Marx described as commodity fetishism. Within the Christmas ritual chain, gifts, decorations, and festive consumption are no longer valued primarily for their use or intrinsic qualities. They are invested with symbolic power. Their absence risks being interpreted as emotional failure. Commodities come to stand in for social relations themselves, acting as proxies for affection, recognition, and togetherness.

What is important is that this fetishization does not operate at the level of false belief. Participants are often fully aware that objects cannot genuinely embody love or care. Yet within the interactional logic of Christmas, they act as if they do. The object acquires its power not because individuals are deceived, but because the ritual requires a material anchor through which emotional energy can be stored, displayed, and circulated. In Collins’s terms, commodities become high-density symbols, saturated with emotional energy accumulated across repeated interaction ritual chains.

This dynamic externalizes ritual success: the achievement of emotional fulfillment appears to depend on objects rather than on interaction itself. Anxiety is thus displaced on the consumption. In effect, responsibility for the success of Christmas rituals is partially delegated to commodities. However, this delegation only works where sufficient resources are available. Christmas rituals are therefore increasingly appropriated and structured by economic forces, which shape not only how the ritual is performed but also what kind of solidarity it produces.

So, the solidarity that emerges is one in which individuals are aligned through shared patterns of consumption, hedonistic anticipation, and self-oriented fulfillment, all of which are symbolically framed as care, generosity, and togetherness. Consumption becomes the dominant medium through which social bonds are enacted and recognized, while its egocentric and pleasure-oriented dimensions are masked by the morally elevated status of Christmas.

This is not a religious critique of commodification but a sociological one. What is at stake is not the loss of transcendence, but a transformation in the mechanisms through which solidarity is generated. Christmas solidarity does not rest primarily on shared belief or moral commitment but on synchronized participation in consumerist interaction ritual chains. Individuals are aligned through similar desires, expectations, and anxieties rather than through a shared collective purpose. Hedonism here does not oppose solidarity; it becomes one of its central vehicles.

In this sense, Christmas functions as a paradigmatic case of how contemporary societies generate social solidarity through ritualized consumption rather than shared conviction. The solidarity produced is real and effective, yet structurally different. It integrates by synchronizing emotions, expectations, and performances, while simultaneously reproducing stress, inequality, and the risk of exclusion. It is a historically specific form of social solidarity, shaped by the dominance of economic mediation in social life. Christmas spirit emerges not despite these dynamics, but through them. We could say that, in contemporary society, even the most intimate forms of togetherness are increasingly organized through interaction ritual chains whose emotional success is inseparable from the logics of consumption.