In Search of the Meaning of Christmas

Whether one observes a secular or religious Christmas, we are all bombarded each year with messages – both subtle and gross – to buy, buy, buy. It’s no different this year, except that the vast Christmas machine seems to have shifted into overdrive. Watching the evening news over the last week, I note a recurring emphasis on the fact that most major American retailers had the worst October, saleswise, since 1969. While this is certainly newsworthy, the extent of the coverage betrays an array of underlying “details”–

1. The media espouses the concerns of corporate America. The economy is in a bad way and Captains of Industry are knocking around like scared pigs in a chute (apologies to John Updike)*. They want us to buy, buy, buy, so as to put them into the black come December 1st. And so the media passes on to us tidbits of information we can use: that Christmas sales are underway early; that price slashing will be deeper and earlier this year, preceding that red-letter-date of “Black Friday.” Kim Komando, the radio-syndicated computer tipster, was even so good as to recently inform us that the very deepest discounts on electronics would come just before Christmas this year.
2. While the following hasn’t been explicitly spelled out, and might even be hotly denied by the collective media, I get the uneasy sense that a suggestion is being made to us in circumspect manner: that is our civic duty, even our patriotic duty, to buy, buy, buy this Christmas, so as to grease the grinding gears of the corporate machine and the body politic.
3. Thus primed, we take the morning paper in trembling hand and scan the flyers….

There is nothing wrong with giving and receiving gifts. But when that becomes the primary objective of Christmas, we are really missing out on what could be so much more. Whether we observe a secular or religious Christmas, this millennial holiday has spawned thousands of beautiful traditions across numerous cultures – traditions that year by year are being lost to commercialism and that cruel, man-eating idol, lucre. By and by, literature, poetry, songs, dancing, togetherness, and yes, joy are replaced by baubles in boxes.

There is still some hope, though. There is a trend afoot now in the United States to move away from crass commercialism in a quest for a deeper meaning of Christmas. Some of us reach into the past to connect with those beautiful old traditions, those old verses, those old songs, the cup of wassail, the coin in the plum pudding, the stories around the fire. Others seek to define Christmas anew – what it means to them, based on their life experiences. In either case, however, these “grassroots” movements are responses to the cheap hype and glitter of the commercialized Christmas.

Throughout its ancient incarnations, those who celebrate Christmas have espoused values above and beyond the giving of gifts, or the mere act of making merry. Good King Winceslas was surrounded by a sumptuous banquet at the Feast of Stephen when he saw a poor man, to whom he extended charity. Similarly, since Victorian times, much seasonal emphasis has been placed upon family, charity, and peace, even as Christmas was deliberately and increasingly commercialized. On one hand the culture taught us, through various media, that Christmas was gathering together in the darkest time of the year, to share of what one had, and to share of oneself. It strengthened the bonds of family and community. It was a celebration of life….

On the other hand, the culture also instructed us to buy, buy, buy.

I submit that the giving of gifts has been misplaced as the centerpiece of Christmas. Gifts, rightfully, belong among the ornaments. And no ornament can replace the warm embrace of another human being. No ornament can replace the values of love, charity, and simple human kindness.

Keep that in mind when you go Christmas shopping this year. You will be happier for it.

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*”Knocking around like scared pigs in a chute” is a description employed in John Updike’s short story, “A&P.” Anyway, Captains of Industry were shooting themselves and jumping out of windows after the Stock Market crash of ’29, so I suppose “knocking around like scared pigs in a chute” is a step up from that.

This year, 2011, I note the profound irony that this particular post has been selected by automated wordpress.com adware to periodically run a Sears Black Friday advertisement.

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