Most Wonderful Time of the Year?

Two years ago I wrote a blog post similar to the following. But as it seems little has changed, it think it's worth another go at applying the message of Jesus to this "most wonderful time of the year." There's a familiar scripture which asks, "Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?" While specks and planks abound throughout the year for most of us, somehow it seems a forest (of pine?) falls into the eyes of many Christians during the Christmas season. For example -- I know many of my friends are passionate about this, I don't wish to offend -- it seems 'speckish' to be concerned about the phrase 'happy holidays.'

If an employee of a store says 'happy holidays,' remember it is NOT his or her job to share the church’s story of the birth of Jesus. That is the job of Christians to do. It is the job of cashiers at big box stores, for example, to keep their sanity while running barcodes across a scanner for an eight-hour shift and taking payments from customers who sometimes hurriedly push, complain and scowl their way through a check-out line, minus the merry or happy.

If we can't smile and say 'merry Christmas' back to someone (who is either simply doing a job or genuinely being nice) and move on, what does that say about our attitudes? If we think 'happy holidays' is a battle cry in the alleged 'war on Christmas,' I believe we are seriously missing the point. I suggest that when Americans spend upwards of half a trillion dollars on Christmas when it would take only $20 billion to ensure that all people in the world could have access to clean water for a year, that's more akin to a war on real Christian values. I fear we're losing the battle when it comes to simplicity, compassion, kindness, treating others as we wish to be treated and the love of money and materialism.

When we support overspending and mass consumption, we should perhaps look at the message we're sending, especially to children. We may talk about 'the reason for the season,' but what are we teaching by our actions? Do we equate love with how much we've spent on gifts for someone? The bigger the price tag the greater the love? Or is quantity the problem? Do we need a mountain of gifts under the tree to such an extent that we buy cheap products without a thought about where they've come from or who has made them? Do we try to make Christmas be about a feeling or moment? I'm guilty of these things too, but change comes one good decision at a time.

A couple of years ago a friend of mine made an excellent point. He said, "In my neighborhood, a few signs are up with 'Jesus IS the reason.' I've been trying to think if there ever was a time when 'Jesus WAS the reason.' I've been thinking about my early Christmases -- e.g., 1950s. Sure, there were some nativity scenes, but it was a holiday that did nothing for my spiritual well-being. The first school day after Christmas, it was the same old story -- the more affluent kids seemed to have 'most favored kid' status with Santa."

It's only in recent times, as we've been TOLD there's a war on a holiday which now takes up more than two months of the year, that we've been worried about things like 'happy holidays,' which was a perfectly fine greeting when I was a kid. Santa Claus was readily accepted as the driving force of the season, just as he is now, but no one complained. Our church Christmas programs had the obligatory (and always touching) reading of the nativity story and everyone went home with a warm and joyful attitude. No one felt compelled to look for the devil in every corner of the tinsel-draped stores or to start a ruckus about 'holiday trees,' which I think is a stupid idea, but harmless in the grand scheme of things. (No one shopped on Thanksgiving, either, but that's another story.)

A huge part of the 'speck and plank problem' is that many people are getting their religious guidance from news outlets and social media rather than straight from the source. If you want to believe what any talking head on television -- on almost ANY media outlet -- says is true about what's happening in the world, that's your business. But let's not take the information as the Gospel. It's not. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John give us the real scoop on the message of Jesus.