KEEP CHRIST OUT OF “CHRISTMAS”

12/3/08

Our society seems to have completely forgotten what this “holimonth” or “holiquarter” we are currently enduring was designed to celebrate. It was originally intended to celebrate the birth of a Great Man, a Man whom many of us believe was God Himself. Jesus took on the form of a man some 2,000 years ago (probably 2012 years ago, though scholarship differs on the almost completely unimportant exact year) in order to lead humankind to salvation by His voluntary death on the cross. Along the way to His death, he showed us how to live life to its fullest. Although you’d never know it by the way we celebrate His birth, he didn’t tell us that the key to a good life is acquiring all kinds of junk that we don’t need. He didn’t say that we ought to get anxious and short with one another in order to achieve some sort of self-designated “perfection” in the celebration of His birthday. He didn’t teach that excess is the way to happiness. He didn’t say that the real way to show love to each other was in the quantity, quality, or the price of the material things we gave each other. On the contrary, His is a way of peace, service, and relative indifference to the material aspects of our very short life here on earth. He tried to teach that a life well lived is a life of service, peace, contentment, and giving of one’s self and one’s time.

The way we celebrate Christmas is beyond sacrilege; it is a figurative slap in the face of the One whose birthday we supposedly celebrate. Everyone is appalled at the death of the Wal-Mart employee on Long Island on what is called “Black Friday,” a title that is telling enough of the monikers we have assigned to our various days of purported celebration of the birth of our Savior. But that death, as tragic as it is, is only a reflection of what Christmas has become: a money-grubbing, anxiety causing, stress inducing self-indulgent, my fellow man be damned debauch that smears the very name of the One whose birth we celebrate. Jesus has become at best an afterthought in the weeks (fast becoming months) long bacchanal we insist on calling Christmas.

Since we as a society have insisted on perverting the celebration of Christ’s birth to a point far beyond recognition and even caricature to the point of outright defiance of His message to and wishes for us, please don’t call this time of the year Christmas. Call it the Holidays. Call it the Winter Celebration. Call it whatever you want, as long as Christ’s name is kept out of it.

Consecrate the name of Christ for true Christmas, the living of His message of service, love, and peace, a Christmas that should not be restricted to the end of December, which, as most of you, was not the time of His birth but was chosen to counter the Roman feast of Saturnalia or winter solstice. Go to Christmas Mass or Christmas services. Sing and enjoy Christmas carols and hymns, prayers, and vespers. Take special care of those less (or even more) fortunate than yourself. Celebrate the birth of Christ and of His salvation. But go to Holiday sales and Holiday parties and sing and/or try to choke down vapid and tawdry Holiday songs like the especially odious “Have a Holly Jolly (Profanation),” “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus,” or “Jingle Bell Rock.” What on earth do these brazen and insipid “Holiday” celebrations have to do with the birth of Christ?

Keep Christ in Christmas, but keep Him far away from “The Holidays.”