Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, December 5, 1993 TAG: 9312030131
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Cody Lowe
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
I've joined the chorus as often as any, I suppose, fuming about Christmas decorations in stores before Halloween gets here. I've threatened bodily harm if I could find some of the cynical toy makers who try to convince children they can't live without this year's doll. I even got caught this year by the office Coke machine, which started dispensing cans emblazoned with the jolly visage of Santa Claus a week before Thanksgiving.
When I get in these moods, like many of us I wallow in a nostalgic - and maybe not entirely accurate - vision of my youth when business people had the decency not to start the Christmas push until the day after Thanksgiving. That still gave us a month - plenty of time - to get the shopping done.
Over the years, the beginning of the shopping season - in terms of advertising and store displays, anyway - gradually moved back a few days at a time until now there are two full months of full-blown Christmas hype.
"Bah, humbug," says many a pastor from the pulpit and many a layperson in the pews.
But wait a minute. How many of those complainers forgo purchasing any presents for friends and loved ones? Pretty darned few, I'd bet. I certainly don't, though I do wait until as near to Dec. 24 as possible to do my shopping.
So, what is our real motive in the bellyaching about the commercialization about Christmas?
For one thing, there is the very real fear - one I share - that such a long period of anticipation will dissipate the joy and wonder of the season. We're afraid that by the time Christmas actually gets here, we will have been Christmased out.
For another, Christians can and should be concerned about the masking of the religious significance of the holiday. It is up to believers, however, to ensure that the celebration of the coming of the Messiah is the focus of their holy days.
Is that religious celebration incompatible with a secular holiday that emphasizes the joy of giving to those we love? The evidence - a couple of centuries, at least, of peaceful co-existance - would indicate not.
The National Council of Churches and some other groups decry the season's excesses - which they say come at the expense of the poor and needy who live around us.
There is, of course, some truth to that. But the point of those declarations often seems to be as much condemnation of the capitalist economic system as they are treatises against the individual sin of greed the season is supposed to foster.
A Lutheran minister in the Northeast recently responded to that by pointing out that Christians are properly thankful for the material blessings of God - and their own hard labor - and ought to feel free to express their joy in those blessings by giving gifts to each other.
Christians should be careful about reading too much into their material wealth, of course. It's plain bad theology to assume that God's favor is reflected in the gold one possesses. It's pretty safe theology, however, to believe that human beings were intended take pleasure from the world God placed them in.
The naysayers also seem to forget that counterbalancing this orgy of consumption is the flood of charitable gift-giving that comes at this time of year. That same spirit that motivates us to buy things for our loved ones prompts us to give generously to organizations devoted to serving the poor. That's the reason they appeal for our support this month instead of in July.
While there are those who care only about what they'll get on Dec. 25 and who will give tastelessly exorbitant gifts that day, the spirit of the season will survive. Even the non-religious get caught up in the good will of the holiday.
The heart of Christmas, though, lies in a distinctly religious message, and ultimately nothing can detract from that for Christians, unless they allow it themselves.
by CNB