Holiday Spirit?

After reading about events from Black Friday, I guess I lost my copy of the memo telling Americans how to celebrate the Christmas season. I guess it's filed with the memo on TPS reports.

Not only is Black Friday when many Americans get up at some forsaken hour of the morning to get bargains on Christmas shopping, it is now the day when we sacrifice some of our own to the gods of holiday consumption. At least three people in the United States died on Black Friday in incidents involved with the shopping season. One poor Wal-Mart employee from Long Island was trampled by the horde that stormed into the building after the employee opened the doors, and several shoppers actually rushed over the employee while he was laying on the ground. Two other people shot and killed each other in a Toys-R-Us elsewhere in the country. Is this how we celebrate Christmas now? Really?

I guess we are at the point when we celebrate the birth of the Savior, Jesus, who would give his life on the cross to pay the penalty for the sins of all human beings and save them, by killing each other to get the must-have items to give as presents. Tell me I'm not the only one who sees something wrong with this. I'm not so sure we aren't celebrating Cash-mas instead of Christmas anymore.

So I have a proposal. (I'm not Jonathan Swift, so I won't call this idea modest.) Let's not have a holiday shopping season for a year or two. No presents, no trying to outdo the neighbors' decorations, no mad stampedes into the stores the day after Thanksgiving. This will force people to focus on what is actually important: good family, good friends, and the rest of the human species.

And I have a message to those who think the above proposal would take away the celebration of Christianity's holiest day. First, Christmas is NOT the holiest day of the Christian year. In fact, I wouldn't even rank it as number two. I put Easter and Good Friday (at least) above Christmas. I do this because out of the four Gospels, only two even mention the birth of Christ, and the two that do give no date for the event. Usually, the Bible is pretty good about giving the time of year to celebrate holidays. Maybe this is a signal. Second, the proposal may provide an opportunity to overturn the tables of our money changers, so to speak.

I know, this post is very cynical. I've had to actually consider whether the true Christmas spirit exists anymore. There will be stories that remind us that it is, but the events of Black Friday remind us that the true Christmas spirit needs our help that much more. Let us commit ourselves to provide that help this year.