'Tis The Season

Ho frikkin' ho. Today is November 12, and I am already sick of Christmas!

There was a time when Christmas could not get here quickly enough. The surprises that were under the tree were always more than generous and were almost always broken before noon! It was still great fun to be a kid. It was not until many years later when I finally figured out how deeply my parents always went into debt during that time just so we kids could have a "nice" Christmas.

We want this for our children now. More than anything, we want our kids to enjoy being children, having fun, exploring life, and learning something new with a sense of awe and wonder that too many adults no longer have. I guess it comes with getting older, but Christmas anymore has become one big pain in the rear bumper.

Why is this? Christmas is still Christmas, isn't it? We still celebrate the birth of the greatest Gift of all. We still celebrate that moment, that one incredible moment, when the Lord God humbled Himself to share in our humanity and show us the way Home.

And what have we done with it? We've turned it into a holiday whose success is measured by how much trash is left on the curb. We have turned it into one huge family conflict. We've turned it into a time of year when those with very little are made to feel even more inadequate as parents because they cannot shower their children with a lot of needless crap. We have turned it into the time of year when the suicide rate goes through the roof. A time that should be joyous above all else has become a time of profound despair for far too many. Is it because they have lost their focus? Or have we so-called "believers" lost our focus?

Some blame commercialism generally and Wal Mart specifically for the mess we've made out of Christmas. The reality is, however, that we have come to acquire a certain sense of entitlement so that rather than bless the Moment that so richly blessed us, we virtually curse the day and wish it would just pass quickly and quietly because there is no way we can give to ourselves or our children all that we believe we are owed.

Oddly, I've been on a tear about Christmas since I began preaching. I have my annual "Wal Mart Christmas" sermon that I dust off every year sometime right after Thanksgiving to remind my congregations of what Christmas is really supposed to mean, what it should really be for us and to us. For some reason, that sermon never seems to make a dent.

I am so deeply thankful that Messiah was delivered to us. So why is it that this holiday is one I have grown to utterly despise? Why can I not make peace with this time of year that my beloved wife and children love? My foul moods this time of year create more hurt feelings than anything else, and my heart shatters when I see what my anger and frustration can do. There is nothing that can make me melt like the contorted face of a child whose heart has been broken.

The season itself has lost its sense of wonderment, and the only mystery left to be associated with Christmas is how we are going to pay for all this crap we've bought! And truly, some of us will have better luck figuring out the miracle of the Immaculate Conception than we will figuring how to pay a $1000 Christmas bill with only $100.

Then of course there are those Christians who will be "offended" such as when Wal Mart and other businesses will begin officially disallowing their employees to say "Merry Christmas", insisting instead upon "Happy Holidays" so as not to offend anyone. Do we really think that Wal Mart has such influence that because they will not support "Merry Christmas" that suddenly Christ will not have been born?

We can do better and we must, but we must also pick our battles. It is not enough to get upset with secular business because Christmas is the time of year that they depend on, and Christians certainly do their part to make the season for retail a good one! Retail business is not the enemy; they sell what folks walk in and buy, but they don't kidnap shoppers.

It seems to me that the true enemy is within each of us and is struggling to be set free so that it can manifest itself in the commercial and secular thereby rendering Christmas to be nothing more than a secular holiday. Simply complaining about commercialism while standing in line to pay for our stuff is not good enough.

The Spirit of the holiday is alive and well. The only question that remains is whether this Spirit will choose to use us or loose us.