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The Working Class Braces for a Hard Candy Christmas
Taken together, skyrocketing food, rent, and energy costs are catastrophic for families at or near the poverty line.
Mid-October seems an odd time to be declaring Christmas stolen by the Grinch of Christmas past.
Nevertheless, COVID-19- or so experts are assuring us- is to be responsible for a very difficult upcoming holiday season, which includes Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa and other important mid-winter celebrations.
Inflation is taking a big bite out of consumer confidence and spending in the run up to the biggest retail season of the year. To say that retailers not named “Amazon” could use a decent retail season this year is to say a portrait of Chairman Mao hangs in Chinese Communist Party headquarters.
Of course it does and of course retailers could use a banner year in 2021; most parents and kids, families, friends and pods could probably use one, too.
Whether or not anyone will actually get what they want for Christmas is another matter entirely.
Besides inflation, which until two weeks ago most experts were predicting to be “transitory,”- a dirty word no one’s allowed to use anymore- there are other problems threatening Christmas, and serious ones.