Christmas for the Masses

During this Advent season, I find myself deeply unsettled.  From the crass, fluffy Christmas specials on television that feature poor mock-ups of decent Christmas movies such as It's a Wonderful Life to hearing people scream "This is the Christmas spirit!" at a house covered in lights, I find that Christmas has been almost completely stripped of Christ.

And I don't mean that "Keep Christ in Christmas" argument.  I mean Christmas as a term has become so absorbed by our capitalistic, materialistic society that Christmas in public has almost no bearing to the Christian celebration.  It has been absorbed into the civil religion of our country which equates Christmas with freedom with the Pilgrims with religious freedom (ironically) with religiosity with Black Friday.  Jesus plays a very small role in Christmas any more.

And yet as Christmas becomes more of a civil religious holiday, it holds less and less of its peaceful appeal or call.  Removing the idea of peace and silent nights from Christmas enables it to be a holiday for profit and for ammunition.  We have decided to respond to every shooting in the world with more guns and Christmas which was to celebrate the Prince of Peace is now a holiday to add to our personal arsenals for whatever coming conflict we seem to have collectively accepted as fact - be that invasion, radical fascists, or zombies.

The level of hatred and aggression in society seems to be climbing, too, during this time in which we are supposedly gearing up for the most wonderful time of the year when peace and love abound.  I find that Christmas as a public civil holiday holds no allure for me any more.  And as I hear the words of the song blared over and over, I worry.  "It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas."  I don't know if I like what that looks like any more.

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