By Erich Vieth on December 17th, 2007
Materialism and Christmas, redux
I was tempted to share some advertisements I recently spied for luxury items to be purchased in the name of Jesus’ birthday, but such ads are ubiquitous. Pointing them out would be unneeded fuel on a small fire.
Instead, I’ll share a post I wrote two years ago about the Grinch.
I find it ironic that the Grinch’s moment of allegedly great heroism occurs when he actually embarks on an act of much greater evil than his Christmas Eve burglarly. That the Grinch pulls off his finale to the applause of a huge annual audience demonstrates that our acquisitive instincts have fully commandeered our conscious cognitive abilities.
For some reason, I’ve been especially aware this year of the strange traditions we associate with “Chistmas.” On the one hand, we have the fictional account of Jesus’ birth (fictional because there is no scriptural support for the date that has been assigned to his birth); on the other hand, we have all the pagan symbols normally thought of as “Christmas” decorations — fir trees, holly wreaths, mistletoe, etc. — all of which are ancient fertility symbols. On the one hand, we are asked to think of Christmas as a holy day; on the other, the whole season overflows with materialism and conspicuous consumption. It’s one of the oddest juxtapositions in our culture.
Living in Alaska for 18 years i have not done a traditional christmas. all i do is be thankful I live in a paradise as i do, nothing special about tha day when i live in this frozen world a paradise and also just another survival day in Jesus’s name we pray. haha a northerners sense of humor or atleast this woman .