Holidays are meant to be a time for celebrating a particular event that is significant to us, one way or another. There is Valentine's Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, Halloween and etc. depending on the person, they can choose to celebrate the holiday in different ways. However, despite the different traditions that one may have for that specific holiday, there's one thing that will never change. That one thing is the fact that people decide to spend so much money for decorations, food and etc. for the holiday that they are celebrating. There are an overwhelming amount of things that people can buy and it ends up putting them out of money, leaving them only to spend even more to survive the holiday season.

Let's start at the beginning of the year when people choose to celebrate New Year's Eve which usually means a lot of parties are going being thrown. Many people decide to make food for their guests, which leads to trips to the grocery store to buy the ingredients needed to prepare for the meals and to also buy alcohol to really get the party going. The hosts may choose to go to the party store to buy decorations to make their house look like party central.

Continuing on to next month: Valentine's Day, the one day of the year where you show your special someone how much they mean to you. There are numbers of gifts that a person can give another to show their love, whether it would be with chocolates, flowers, stuffed bears, date nights or any other gift that a person might want to give to another.

Nearly 141 million cards are given to various people by others on this romantic holiday and nearly 2.2 million marriages take place on Valentine's Day. This shows a lot about how people value this holiday that has become one of the most popular holidays of the century.

Another major holiday in which people empty their wallets out is Easter, the holiday that celebrates the resurrection of Jesus Christ. This turns into a holiday that's all about candy, Easter eggs, the Easter bunny and Easter baskets. Families love to treat their kids with little treats and this means a few trips to the store to find candies, toys and surprises from the "Easter bunny."

Moving on to the fall seasons, the first one being Halloween, a day where youngsters dress up and go house to house trying to collect as much candy as they can. Halloween is the second highest grossing commercial holiday, right behind Christmas.

There are many traditions that are involved in the holiday, but the most basic tradition that people follow is trick-or-treating. Study shows that a total of $5.8 million is spent on costumes, candy, decorations, cards and other Halloween essentials.

In November, there is the traditional holiday of Thanksgiving, a day that is meant for family members to get together to share a meal and be thankful for the things they have. Members of the family want to spend so much time together that more than 42.2 million Americans travel 50 or more miles over the Thanksgiving weekend. There seems to be a lot of preparation for this holiday which is basically all about feasting on a delicious dinner. There's also the traditional Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade that 44 million Americans choose to tune in to watch it on their television.

Finally, the granddaddy of holidays: Christmas, the day where Christians celebrate the birth of their Lord Jesus Christ. However, it's become very Americanized as most people revolve it around playing in the snow, Santa Claus, presents and a bunch of other things that aren't really related to the true meaning of the holiday. Christmas purchases account for one-sixth of all retail sales in the United States. There are 35 million real Christmas trees sold and there are more than 3 billion Christmas cards that are given to people in the U.S.

As you can see, there are many holidays that have become Americanized and have become very consumer-like. With more and more purchases being made as each holiday begins to roll around for everyone, there is more money leaving their wallets to get the essentials needed to get through the holidays. There are other holidays in which Americans spend their money on preparations, but the major ones are the ones that everyone is mostly familiar with.