Ramadan for Sale

Consumerism creeps into my soul

I love Drogerie Markt, DM, the German drugstore. I am a faithful member of the church of DM, as I will call it here playfully/cynically. I get a kick out of the little seasonal displays, and, like the good consumer I am, frequently visit the store just to see what’s new and what goodies have been moved to the discount shelf. Not only that, but I even considered getting a job there because I spend so much money and time there, why not close the circle?

In autumn, DM has pasta noodles in the shape of leaves, pine trees at Christmas, and bunnies at Easter. Not to mention the chocolates, napkins, candles, picture frames, and anything else you can think of that can be thematized for every season. They also have goods for Halloween, Carnival, World Cup if applicable, German Christmas cookies starting in August, and also, in recent years, the full spectrum of Pumpkin Spice products for sale in the fall. I watch marketing trends, but this next one surprised me.

In early winter, I noticed that they had a blue “magical Ramadan” advent calendar for sale. (Photo below). For 8.95 Euros, your children can open a little window and get their halal chocolate treat for every day of the month of Ramadan. This year it was celebrated from 28 February to the end of March. I don’t know what level of Ramadan-related sales happen in majority-Muslim markets to know if this is peanuts compared to it, but I was perturbed.

Why does the Ramadan Advent calendar bother me so much? Maybe it’s because Ramadan is about fasting (not just from food) as part of a spiritual practice and so it’s equivalent to a “Lenten Buffet” but also because it reveals the extent to which every single thing on God’s given earth, including all aspects of human life—body, soul and spirit—will eventually be subsumed into the rapacious jowls of capitalist consumption. I know I’m sounding dramatic, but because I don’t celebrate Ramadan myself, I could see the phenomenon more objectively.

Or take these probably made in China or Poland 1,001 Arabian Nights style Ramadan products (photo below) on sale at Woolworth’s discount home goods, which are like cultural appropriation times two. First, they’ve taken all things German Christmas, like strings of lights, incense holders, napkins, and cookie bags, and then put an Arabic twist to it, as if all Muslims are Arabs. This is equivalent to the US American tendency to view Africa as a country. There’s something cringe about it.

Is there a limit to any substance of human culture that includes festivals, rituals, ceremonies, and all the arts and crafts, being commercialized? Not really. Is there a limit to what part of our souls remains untouched by these powerful algorithmic market forces? This I will leave first as an open question.

I am part of the system, and I also must hustle. I put a lot of hours into my new newsletter, and yet am conflicted about how to monetize, despite not having even sold out yet at all (read about the double-sell-out era here). But I will if I can. I will walk the hustle-vs-genuine-article tightrope, and at least observe and reflect upon the selling of my soul as I do it.

How to make a living is an eternal question of the modern person, even as Jesus said that the poor will always be among us. But the level of modern consumption is not sustainable. Not everyone can buy a new outfit every week or own a car. Eight billion people can’t all consume at the level of the Kardashians, or even your average Western European. Environmentally, and ecologically, our lifestyle is not sustainable, nor does the rat race sustain human beings in their true needs.

Never have I felt so lonely, sad, and existentially bereft as when I am compulsively shopping. The itch of needing a new sensation, a new thing, gets scratched for a few minutes. Yet. … I’ve read all the blogs, and listened to the podcasts about minimalism and self-improvement; I learned about how the mountains of trash and discarded fast fashion pollute the earth and I know what is going on. I am not an uneducated consumer, but rather, a perfect target for all the marketing and research billions invested in the modern machine of buy buy buy. Heck, if I were Muslim and had kids, maybe would have bought the Ramadan advent calendar.

I lurk in many Subreddits and Facebook groups—mostly about Berlin, but also military veterans issues and other communities that interest me, and the common theme that pops out is the number of people reaching out to bemoan their loneliness, feelings of isolation, and their lack of social connection. In Berlin, it is especially acute in the new immigrant community, where many people come from highly sociable, communal cultures and are shocked when they encounter the German closed-offed-ness.¹ I have experienced it too, even though I speak the language, and developed coping mechanisms, some less healthy than others. Like shopping at DM vs. going for a walk in the park or joining a Meetup.

No amount of seasonal displays will ease the existential angst that creeps into my soul sometimes. The doomscrolling demands a distraction. Alcohol is not an option for me anymore. What nourishes us, to paraphrase the good book, is not bread or bunny-shaped noodles alone. But words of comfort that feed our spirit.

Not to say that everyone should start celebrating one of the world’s major religions, though it’s been argued, but that common humanity and the culture that arises from us human beings creating together—especially what cannot be commodified—will truly nourish and sustain us. Nonetheless, many apps claim to bring people together and facilitate and thus profit from human connection. From hook-up and dating to group activities like Meetup—even Substack (where I started a newsletter listing Berlin literary events) the dragon of monetization creeps closer to the human encounter. But the encounter itself is where we remain free. How we meet our fellow humans is our only space to act free from monetization and commercial compulsion.

Recently, I had the idea of starting a no-tech café; people could meet for a coffee and all devices would have to be turned off. The irony is that I recently saw an ad for a meetup where you pay a fee to sit in a space and read books or play board games, with no devices allowed. There’s always a catch. The monetary one.

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You may also be interested in my other posts about Berlin, or addiction. The archive is behind a paywall.

1. Recent number from the Berlin Statistics office show an over 1000% increase in Indians to Berlin in the last decade. https://www.rbb24.de/panorama/beitrag/2025/03/auslaender-einwohner-berlin-zuzug-indien-fluechtlinge-china-vietnam.html