Not Christmas personally, but the season in which people do the act of Christmas'ing. You know, the lights, the decorations, that reindeer and Santa frivolity. All of that stuff would be so much easier for me to simply enjoy if it weren't for all of those Christmas songs that declare "every day should be Christmas".
I do understand that this is typically a Christian declaration that everybody should stop treating each other like crap all year long and then sing carols and play nice for a few weeks, but isn't that just another way of asking WWJD, what would Jesus do, which is something you are probably not even thinking about when speeding shoppers cut you off on the road in pursuit of the same sale you are chasing?
Every day should be Christmas- which would make the actual day that Christ was born an inconsequential detail that we often debate at this time of year as well. Americans should freely enjoy whatever day they choose to commemorate the life of Christ, or the goodness of Santa because in actuality, they both represent pretty cool dudes. The religious indignation of Christmas brought the Happy Holidays compromise- so now Santa is thoroughly dominating Jesus Christ who is suppose to be the reason for the season. Fans of both seasonal icons fully agree that good isn't bad, and since Christian's don't have a birth right to good behavior, Santa or Hanukah or Kwanzaa or anything reasonably good is a reasonable expression of holiday cheer.
Yet, typically we fight over who is celebrating this holiday correctly and whether a made up birthday holiday is legitimate anyway.
Maybe its just me, but some of the meanest people in America seem to be the most ardent participants in the revelry of this season. They cuss their way through long lines at the discount stores just so they can purchase the cheap lights and insure that they have the best display on the block- most likely to be mean about how great their decorations look. During the holiday season, mean Christians (especially from holiness churches that stay in session too long) don't even wait until they get home from church in their Sunday's best before they tell off a clerk in the deli for helping someone out of order. Before long, even the normally nice become mean during this time of the year simply because it becomes a means of surviving mean people.
I have sincere questions about whether or not Christ came to establish a new church that bears his name, which makes me really wonder how cool Jesus is with the Christmas holiday that is supposedly in his honor as well? Christ spent way too little time in church for anyone to determine his message being one of traditional religious pursuit. Christ came to redefine the church and to redefine religion in a way that we still question, hence the many variation of Christian beliefs. Since we can't agree about Christ, we've stopped letting him taking prominence during the holiday season. If Christ simply is no longer the reason for Christmas, are Hanukkah, Kwanzaa and Santa just part of the many ways that we will soon choose to celebrate the holiday's (don't call it Christmas because that means Christ)? If so, then this already stressful time of the year might get even worse as stores scramble to meet the demands of our divided holiday expressions of Christmas in fear of the backlash from excluding someone.
Truly good people don't let any season dictate their treatment of others because they realize that every moment that we encounter someone probably was ordained from on high. Even if life is not so divinely ordered, truly good people would never leave it to chance. Seasonally good people don't often even live up to their season of choice. Like a broken resolution, holiday cheer is typically manufactured by spirits and ruined by over-consumption and a promise to do better next year. The spirit of this season has become people who's childhood memories are too precious to minimize with reasonable perspective, so they make unreasonable grasps at the past. Christ is worthy of a season, but including Christ in your celebration of the season is likely to remind you of something greater than yourself, which is quite a bummer when Christmas hopes run high. Santa, on the other hand, only expects us to be a little nicer while we indulge in our selfish holiday dreams.
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| Dr. Kent Brantly. Ebola survivor. |
Like the kind of perspective that comes from surviving Ebola; or the kind that comes from losing your son and having him lay dead in the street for over 4 hours.
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| Parents of Michael Brown |
Perspective is a simple thing to inject upon life, but we either choose to gain it vicariously, or we are doomed to learn it personally.
Choose carefully.
Merry Christmas.
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