The Christmas season has now started regardless of which generation's seasonal calendar one uses. For people my age, Christmas season always started the day after Thanksgiving. But times have changed. And though I don't know when the change occurred, some younger generations now recognize the day after Halloween as the beginning of the Christmas season. No doubt some even recognize the Christmas season as starting some time before Halloween. And it isn't unrealistic to think that the Christmas season will eventually last all year long if it keeps being extended.
Now if Jesus is the reason for the season, then we should note that Christmas shopping is the reason for the long lines we face in traffic and many stores. And in America, Christmas is more about Christmas shopping than it is about what the New Testament says about the birth of Jesus Christ. This unbiblical center of Christmas does invite and enable the celebration of Christmas to be more inclusive and thus involves a great diversity of people as well as includes more people. But that inclusivity comes at an extremely high price for the Gospel.
Christmas shopping enables many retail stores to remain in business. I remember way back when I use to sell pianos and organs in a mall, we were told that we depended on Christmas sales to continue to exist. Unfortunately, sales of pianos and organs were down during that time period.
Again, for most of America, Christmas is more about shopping than it is about the Gospel. And what follows is that Christmas is more about making a profit than it is about faith. This is yet another example of how the Free Market and its values invade an institution or tradition so that its values change how that institution operates or how a tradition is observed.
This blog has stated more than once that the Free Market has changed how Democracy is viewed and practiced more than how Democracy has changed how the Free Market is allowed to operate. And what is being said here is that Democracy is not the only victim of the Free Market. The Free Market has a greater influence on how we observe Christmas, even among many Christians, than how the Christian Faith and the story of the Nativity has affected how we utilize the Free Market.
If what is being claimed here is true, then America is spiritually lost to all the trappings of materialism and all that it is included with living as a thing-oriented society. To a thing-oriented society, things are more important than people. Thus, such a society resists changing any part that would increase the priority we put on people over things. This means that we will protect an economic system that is increasing wealth disparity among its people from change. This means that we will resist safeguarding and ensuring social safety nets if that includes having less money in our own pockets. This means that we will be fearful of immigrants emigrating to our nation lest they benefit from society and its system more than they contribute. And this means that we will be more interested in the sale of weapons both at home and abroad than we will be in on those who are the victims of the use of those weapons. Here, one only needs to think about how President Trump rejected the idea of even confronting Saudi Arabia for the murder of Khashoggi because of the vast amount of money involved in weapons contracts with that nation.
While many of my fellow religiously conservative Christian Americans search hard to find scapegoats for the fall of America, we need only to look in the mirror for the true guilty party. For as the old saying goes, 'we have met the enemy and they are us.' And the enemy is us when the Free Market has a greater say over how we celebrate Christmas than the New Testament has. But that is hard for us to recognize since we have so often conflated the America we grew up in with our faith.
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