Too much Christmas?

With Rick Perry's heavily-parodied 30-second TV ad, "Strong" fresh on my mind - in particular his manufactured talking point about ending our current president's "war on religion" (well, that and the fact that Perry's jacket ironically bears a striking resemblance to the one Heath Ledger wore in "Brokeback Mountain") - I enjoyed this recent blog post by Tony Campolo's group Red-Letter Christians.  In short, it chronicles the real war on religion, and specifically Christmas - not some contrived political gimmick, but rather the fact that our church and community have morphed the birth of Jesus into something far beyond what it really is.

I guess in a sense this shouldn't surprise us.  We've always been a "bigger-is-better" kind of culture.  Those fries in your fast food order not enough?  Just super-size it.  Your wheels not placing you high enough above the road you're driving on? Hello, Ford Excursion.  And that's not even mentioning this actual iPod/iPhone docking station.  Seriously, you've got to see this.  I don't know anyone who has this......yet.

On the other hand, it's true that we like to make things smaller too.  Cell phones used to be clunky contraptions that took up the floorboard of our car; now we carry them in our pocket.  While some cars have gotten bigger, we've shrunk others to the size of glorified golf carts.  And some things we've managed to minimize completely - take, for instance, reading a book on an iPad or Kindle.

Seems like we just can't let some things be the way they're supposed to be.

Our current observation of Christmas strkes me much the same way.  Part of it, I guess, is the overwhelming monster of commercialism that surfaces every year at this time.  So much about the celebration of the season is geared toward getting us to make purchases - often beyond what we should (note this article on the higher-than-usual return rate stores are experiencing). 

But something else is going on too.  As funny as it sounds, it almost feels like we're over-saturated with Christmas.  We can't get away from it, whether it's Christmas specials on TV every night, or overbooked calendars, or radio stations playing Christmas carols in early November.  And the crazy thing is, we think it's supposed to be this way.  The more Christmas, the better.

Is it possible to get too much of Christmas??

Think back to that very first Christmas. It was nowhere near the perfect spectacle ours is.  In fact, the chain of events that we recount every December in scripture readings and Christmas pageants was a perfect example of everything going wrong that could:

A 14-year old girl gets pregnant, out of wedlock, and the man she was engaged to isn't the father.  In case you're wondering, the stigma this scenario would carry in our day was just as strong back then, if not stronger.

Then, to add insult to injury, some high-and-mighty emperor, the one holding all the marbles, decrees a census that couldn't have come at a worse time for the young mother-to-be. She has to travel with her betrothed to his hometown, per the law, to be registered. In case you're wondering, traveling long distances right as you're expecting was just as risky back then, if not moreso.

So they finally get to the town - great!  Where she promptly goes into labor - not great!  They're desperate. They look for some place to take them in; anyplace.  I imagine this is kind of like the way we today house-hunt for the perfect home at the perfect price that doesn't exist.  With each dead end, you have to lower your expectations; lower them to the point where a rickety old shack full of barnyard animals and all the lovely things that come with barnyard animals looks great.  And it's there, in a wooden trough used to feed animals, where she lays her newborn child.

It seems kind of silly, how we take this comedy-of-errors story - one we've heard and experienced dozens and dozens of times - and slick it up into our December.  That's the real war on Christmas - anything that pulls us away from the utter humanity of the Christmas story, and pushes us to focus on another set of storylines that simply don't fit the original.  That first Christmas wasn't at all perfect.  But it was more than enough.

So how should we celebrate Christmas?  I kind of like the way the blog puts it:

"To commemorate this birth, I’d like to see a Christmas .... far from the usual holiday extravaganza that seeks to dazzle us. Show me instead a quietly joyful, somber and reflective acoustic celebration, one that would call us back to the baby, in his silence and simplicity, who reminds us of the only gift, the only story that really matters;  the glimpse of eternity held in a baby’s gaze."

It's hard, I know.  And I don't think we have to go all cold-turkey on the things we love about this time of year.  Just shoot for some moderation.  Stick with the small fries - or better yet, a side of fruit.  Like a more nuanced approach to Christmas, it's a lot better for you.

Comments

[Cameron Marion]

Wow!! Christmas is coming and I can say it is already knocking our door and just in this perfect moment I've found this awesome segment which is great read for me so far. Whatever you have shared here about this wonderful event seems to me brilliant mentioned. Thanks mate and have a nice read.