Killing Christmas
On the second day of November I walked into a local store and noticed the Halloween aisle was now the Christmas aisle. All the lights and baubles of Christmas – all lit up and sparkly – as if Christmas were only a few days away. I said to myself – It seems Christmas starts earlier and earlier every year. I paid for my purchases (no Christmas things, mind you) and left the store. And walked to my car, started it up and flipped through some radio stations.
Guess what? On this, the second day of November, I found a radio station playing 100% Christmas music 24 hours a day, seven days a week until the day after Christmas. I’m not a mathematician but November second is fifty-one days before Christmas – that’s over seven weeks.
I don’t get it. When I was a kid we put up our Christmas tree a week before Christmas. The stores didn’t have Christmas decorations until after Thanksgiving. There was no Christmas music wafting through the city streets and stores until about two weeks prior to Christmas. Being a kid I remember Christmas as a magical time, a short time that came and went every year so quickly. Our Christmas tree was up for only two weeks – the week before Christmas though New Year’s Day.
What makes things valuable is their rarity. If we all celebrated our birthdays starting seven weeks before, by the time our birthday actually arrived it would be almost meaningless.
I really feel badly for the children growing up in this era of greed, instantaneous communications, lack of privacy, and instant gratification. We’re killing Christmas. Before long, Halloween and Christmas will be one long combined holiday starting in early October. I used to think I would not live long enough to see Halloween – a pagan holiday – merged with Christmas, a Christian holiday.
We’ve taken Christ out of Christmas and merged it with witches, brooms, ghosts and goblins, so now we have one pagan holiday sliding into a another – or so it seems. We’re on the road to perdition and most refuse to see the warning signs or even so much as give a thought to what’s happening to our culture and our society.
And I don’t care if the 25th of December was a date once used by pagans to celebrate the winter solstice. No one knows, for sure, the real date of the birth of Jesus. December 25th is the day that was chosen for Christians to celebrate the birth of Christ and twenty-fifth day of December is as good a day as any other.
Whether you believe in Christ, or Christianity, or whether or not you’ve never set foot in a church, the birth of Jesus is an important and an historical event. Those who don’t believe should respect the ones who do. I respect other religions’ right to exist, to celebrate holidays and traditions as they wish. But the world has taken the birthday of Jesus and turned it into a seven-week-long sales event. And it’s killing Christmas for the kids as well as for parents and grandparents.
Black Friday and Cyber Monday have nothing to do with Christmas or Jesus and everything to do with money. Unfortunately, Black Friday and Cyber Monday have become as much of a “Christmas” tradition as holiday lights and Santa Claus.
Now, for the first time Black Friday is being “celebrated” every Friday starting six weeks before Christmas – and the name of the god that black Friday honors is named Greed. When the “real” Black Friday comes – the day after American Thanksgiving – people will still crush each other trying to get a TV set, computer, or tablet at some ridiculously low price. And if this year is like previous years, some people are going to be injured or killed in the store stampedes that will surely occur the minute the stores’ doors open for business on the “real” Black Friday – sacrifices all to the god named Greed.
The meaning of Christmas has been buried under a mountain of cash and credit card receipts. It has been lost and it is downing in an ocean of materialism. You would think enough people would cry out – “Enough is enough – we are angry and we’re not going to stand by and watch as the god named Greed kills Christmas.” It’s too bad that that will never happen. It will never happen because the world has changed so much, and the very thing I’ve loved so much, for so many years – technology is exacerbating the problem and speeding it up.
Parents want to be their kids’ friends instead of parents. They’re kids with money and sex drives – they’re not adults. It’s all about money and accumulating wealth and material things – it’s no wonder our society get more and more soulless every year.
I hope I won’t be around to see Halloween and Christmas merge to become one two-month-long orgy of spending and accumulating things. Of parents trying to buy their own children’s friendship and love by burying them in gifts. I’m glad I won’t be around to see what the next generation does to Christmas. I’m glad I won’t be around to see where all this leads. I have a distinct feeling it’s not going to lead to a very good or very nice place.
We’ve killed our privacy; we’ve killed our individualism; we’ve killed our creativity as a society, and now we’ve killed Christmas. We have no one to blame but ourselves. It’s my fault and it’s your fault because we looked the other way and we’ve let it happen – and it’s not like we didn’t see this coming; it didn’t start last week, or last year, it started decades ago and like a river rushing to the precipice of some mighty waterfall, we are powerless to stop it.
I am glad I have the memories of Christmases past. My parents we’re not well off and, if I was lucky, I got two or three gifts. But I can remember the sparsest Christmas were more full of love and loving and Jesus that the Christmases when gifts were so plentiful they filled an entire room and took hours to open. Somehow love and Jesus both got lost in that huge pile of gifts.
Christmas should be a time for families to gather together and share each other’s company. It should be a time of love and a time for reflecting upon the year almost completed. It should be a time when we remember whose birthday it is we are celebrating and pay honor to Him whether we are Christians or not. Jesus changed the world by bringing light and truth and love into it. In the two thousand years since He walked the Earth we’ve done all we can to undo all he did and now we’ve gotten ourselves a mess that I don’t think anyone can clean up.
We’re killing Christmas, it’s almost dead – it succumbed to greed and lust for things we don’t need, but things we desire. We’re piling up material goods and while our culture’s soul slowly drains away.
We’re killing Christmas and you and I have watched it happen – and we stood silently by while the god named Greed slowly stole Christmas away from us.
But, there is hope because we can keep Christmas alive in our own way, in our own lives, in our own hearts, with our own families, by remembering why we celebrate Christmas – and remembering that our family and our friends and our love are not sold anywhere on Black Friday or Cyber Monday, yet they are the greatest gifts of all. Love is a gift from the soul, not from some Black Friday special… and you don’t even have to wrap it up.
So while we can’t stop them from killing Christmas, we don’t have to let it die.
I could not agree more.
A BIG Amen to this!!!!
My goodness, you do sound angry and I am in agreement with you. I hear of what is going on ‘over there’, I live in the Netherlands and here Thanksgiving is not celebrated and there is no Black Friday or Cyber Monday. When I first came to this country about 30 years ago , I couldn’t find any Christmas decorations in the stores until about a week before Christmas. There was no celebrating Valentine’s Day or Halloween either. However, the fever seems to have crossed the ocean and Christmas Season is beginning here early as well. On the 5th of December, the Dutch celebrate Saint Nicholaas. This holy man arrives with his ‘Black Petes’ on that day bringing presents to the children who have been ‘good all year’. This celebration came and went before there was any sign of Christmas in the air but now, everything seems to be jumbled together. The good Saint has not yet come and the stores are advertising Christmas and ‘de Kerstman’, aka Father Christmas and I do believe the children are becoming more and more confused. Now getting down to what Christmas is really all about, the birth of Jesus, somehow that just doesn’t seem to be so important to a lot of people here. I have always loved the Christmas Season, it was such a magical time when I was younger. I agree that it should not be ‘dragged out’ for material gain but what do I know? Yes there are many people who do not believe but they should show respect for those who do. That’s what I have to say.
so very true
AMEN to this!!!!! Couldn’t have said it better myself. I have felt soooo annoyed seeing stores put out their Christmas decorations even before Hallowe’en! Pure greed! And by the time that Chrismas really rolls around, one is so sick of hearing the carols from November, the crowds with their long faces in the stores, the senseless spending of $$’s on gifts that alot of people don’t want/need, etc….etc….. What happened to the true meaning of Chistmas??!!?? And yes, we the public, have let this happen unfortunately. How very sad!!!!!
This was a timely article; alot of us feel the same way. Thank you for bringing this to our attention!
And in closing, wishing you a peaceful and blessed holdiay season.
I have been thinking and saying all of the things you so eloquently enumerated about the present day ways of celebrating Christmas. Indeed, the stores do kick everything into gear earlier and earlier in their relentless efforts to grab all the cash they can. Greed rules the world — and greed will be the world’s downfall.
Thank you so much for your article!
You said eloquently what many of us have said year after year and, as you pointed out, greed is stealing our very souls! May I share what you’ve written?
This was in my inbox today, similar sentiments, but oh so true also in Australia.
MERRY CHRISTMAS
YOUR FIRST CHRISTMAS CARD
Cleverly done!!!
T’was two months before Christmas
When all through our land,
Not a Christian was praying
Nor taking a stand.
Why the PC Police had taken away
The reason for Christmas – no one could say.
The children were told by their schools not to sing
About Shepherds and Wise Men and Angels and things.
It might hurt people’s feelings, the teachers would say
December 25th is just a ‘ Holiday ‘.
Yet the shoppers were ready with cash, cheques and credit
Pushing folks down to the floor just to get it!
CD’s from Madonna, an X BOX, an I-Pod
Something was changing, something quite odd!
Retailers promoted Ramadan and Kwanzaa
In hopes to sell books by Fran-ken & Fonda..
As Targets were hanging their trees upside down
At Lowe’s the word Christmas – was nowhere to be found.
At K-Mart and Staples and Penny’s and Sears
You won’t hear the word Christmas; it won’t touch your ears.
Inclusive, sensitive, Di-ver-is-ty
Are words that were used to intimidate me.
Now Daschle, Now Darden, Now Sharpton,
Wolf Blitzen
On Boxer, on Rather, on Kerry, on Clinton !
At the top of the Senate, there arose such a clatter
To eliminate Jesus, in all public matter.
And we spoke not a word, as they took away our faith
Forbidden to speak of salvation and grace
The true Gift of Christmas was exchanged and discarded
The reason for the season, stopped before it started.
So as you celebrate ‘Winter Break’ under your ‘Dream Tree’
Sipping your Starbucks, listen to me.
Choose your words carefully, choose what you say
Shout MERRY CHRISTMAS,
not Happy Holiday !
Please, all Christians join together and
wish everyone you meet
MERRY CHRISTMAS!
Christ is The Reason for the Christ-mas Season!
AMEN!!!
Oh, such a breath of fresh air and truth! I wish so much that more people would speak out about the overwhelming consumerism and political correctness that is drowning our society and stealing our freedom. You are right, we have all allowed this to happen by our silence. We live in a world of political correctness gone mad. The world condemned communism for stealing freedom and forcing everyone into a politically designed mold, but today is no different. It has just been manipulated in a different way. This year I shall do as I have always done and send Christmas Cards with messages about the love and peace of Christ with a prominent Merry Christmas. People can choose whether or not to be offended. This is an expression of who I am. Take it or leave it. Kudos for writing such a heartfelt and meaningful piece.
I agree totally.
absolutely! Makes me so very sad about our society and where is seems headed.
This is wonderful. I so agree with all that has been written, although I must confess: I so hate Halloween because of what it really is all about, that I am somewhat relieved to see Christmas decorations. Would much rather they were CHRISTmas decorations, of course.
I live in Canada so our Thanksgiving day celebration is long past and that may give me a somewhat different overall view.
But I don’t think it is too early to wish everyone a very “Merry CHRISTmas!”.
Amen and Amen. That is so awesome what you wrote. May God richly bless you for what you have written. Jesus is the reason for the season.
This is so true. Everything about Christmas and the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ has been taken away. I couldn’t agree with you more about people are so greedy now days. Children do not know the real meaning of Christmas. They get presents all year long and when it comes to Christmas they don’t appreciate anything that is given to them. They expect it. I miss having Christmas like I did growing up. I come from a family of 8 children and so our Christmas’s were a little sparse, but we didn’t know any different. I would love to go home and have Christmas with all my siblings again. My father is gone, but my mother lives in Arizona in the winter time. It would mean so much to be able to have a Christmas like we did growing up. Christmas is a time for family and not about how much you can give for gifts. God Bless to you Darcy and T.C. You two are the best.
Couldn’t agree more. I work for a large company that sells lumber among other things. Halloween candy was on display by the first of August this year and the Christmas decorations were up before Labor Day. This is suppose to be the time of year where we rejoice in our faith, and our love ones. Very little is said or paid notice to Thanksgiving. I never understood the the big spending concerning Halloween. As for Christmas; well the people are just plain rude. I feel like telling them ( which I can not say) ” If all this shopping is so stressful then why do it? No one has a gun to your head.” Its amazing that so many people are in debt and you wonder why. When they open their wallet there isn’t just one credit card there, but could be as many as 10 or even more. Chances are they have a balance on all of them. That is just plain nuts! We have lost our moral compass and replaced it with “things” we think we need. If you have a roof over your head, food in your fridge, and the love of God. Then all else will take care of itself. Have a Happy Thanksgiving and a Merry Christmas.
this is a wonderful way to start my day after reading what was written about Christmas and everything it stands for I am so glad there are other people out there that feel the same as I do….what they have done to Christmas is such a shame it doesn`t resemble anything like it was when I was a kid so I thank God that I have those wonderful memories to look back on…..Killing Christmas was a great article I wish everyone could read it Thank You for that truth.
I agree
I completely agree with EVERYONE’S comments. All I can say is “DITTO” to everyone above.
Everything that has been said is true. The article Killing Christmas has really opened the flood gates of what has been on everyone’s mind and given us a chance and a place to express them. Thank you!
God’s people in Jesus the Christ always have hope and that means everything in this world and beyond! As Colossians 3:15 tells us “And let the peace of God rule in your in your hearts, —– ” Christmas is a joyful season because of Jesus’ birth and no one can take that away from us.
This essay is such a breath of fresh air and there are so many wonderful replies, all that’s left to say is AMEN to every word written.
Merry Christmas
So beautifully said and so true. Amen
Hey guy! Right on! But fear not…corruption may seem to have the upper hand, but in the end, goodness will over come the evil of commercialism. He’s coming again!
Amen!
Am so relieved to discover I am not the only one to feel sickened by the almost total commercialism of a sacred holiday. The stores in this area were putting Christmas decorations out (for sale) before Halloween. Even worse than that, the Hallmark Movie & Mystery Channel started showing Christmas movies the day after Halloween—24/7—and few, if any of those movies appear to be about the real reason for celebrating Christmas. Maybe they are being shown as a power of suggestion thing–to encourage people to dash out and buy greeting cards. Times have certainly changed—and change is not always good.
no one is sure how to answer any holiday greeting anymore…too many offended if the wrong response is said…
well, all I can say to everyone is a loud happy ‘MERRY CHRISTMAS” to everyone…if they want to reply or ignore me that’s o.k. with me…but at least I said my part !!….MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL AND TO ALL A GOODNIGHT !!!
I so agree with everything that was written. Even before Christmas arrives, I’m sick of the Christmas Music and all the decorations.
Whether believing in Christianity or, not believing in anything is the right of every individual, but the joy of Christmas is for everyone, well, it wasat one time.
Christmas, Easter, Halloween, Mothers Day, Father’s Day, Valentines Day, are ‘milked’ for as long as possible every year, along with every other ‘day’ for something which the ‘medicine men’ can dream up.
The happiness of Christmas shopping has gone by the wayside, and turned shoppers into grumpy rampant ‘bulls’, all due to the new religion created by the sell, sell, sell merchants, the god of the religion is MONEY, in Australia and other countries where the killing of Christmas is taking place, now!
Amen! AMEN! So well said and thank you for sharing your thoughts – apparently many others feel the same way! JESUS is the reason for the Season!
Her is my resounding AMEN, too! Hopefully when we all band together, just maybe we can help change things around for the younger generations. Thank you loads for this article….it is priceless.
The very number of responses to this message says there is hope!!
Merry Christmas to all. And love!
Amen
A couple of weeks ago I posted on Facebook about the same thing. I’m 67 and seems like the older I get the more this commercialism leaves a bad taste in my mouth. The only ones we can blame for this is ourselves because bought into this. This is part of the reason our society is the way it is today.
I agree with this well-written article and almost everything that has been said in the comments except for the Christmas music being played early. I LOVE Christmas Carols and I could listen to them all year long and never get tired of them. They are such a celebration of joy and love and peace–a message that is needed all year long.
If beginning the Christmas time of celebration was about celebrating the birth of Jesus and the reason for His birth, it could be such a joyous, extended time for Christians all over the world. However, it is, as the article said, a timeline created by marketers and the main thing being celebrated is the god of greed.
It is also a way of passing over Thanksgiving, which has always been a special time for families to gather and express gratitude for their blessings. Now, stores are opening on Thanksgiving for PRE-Black Friday sales and the news is saying that the “best deals” will be on Thanksgiving Day so get to the stores early. Oh my. It is no wonder that so many families are torn apart these days.
People, please SLOW DOWN and appreciate the ones you have around you, the children and/or grandchildren, nieces/nephews/cousins over whom you have influence; the parents, grandparents and great-grandparents who may still be with you. They don’t need more things. They need your time, attention, and love. None of those three things can be bought with the almighty dollar at some store.
Please protest stores opening on Thanksgiving Day, by NOT SHOPPING, despite the temptations from television, Internet and newspaper ads to do otherwise. Write to the stores and ask them not to be open on Thanksgiving next year. Reward the stores that are closed on Thanksgiving by shopping at them after Thanksgiving Day. If we don’t take a stand, the god of greed will corrupt everything that is good about Thanksgiving and Christmas. Let’s not stand by and let that happen.
Thanksgiving has ruined Christmas, because Christmas has been through the ages a time for rejoicing for your family, your friends and giving thanks to the God you believe in for them all. Because Chistmas come so close on the heels of Thanskgiving, the true meaning is lost by enhancing it with glamour and materialism. If you want to give thanks, in the true meaning of the Thanksgiving holiday, do so around Veterans Day, for they are why you can live the life you live, like the harvest, so depended on in the past. As the harvest these days is the continuum of a lifestyle, let us celebrate that a that time, and give Christmas back to Christmas