Is there too much Christmas?
Every once in a while something is worth repeating. This piece, written a few years ago when John Stuart was still entertaining us with his faux news program, his insight into the season elicited the following.
I offer it again.
Is there too much Christmas? It was a bit over a week ago when John Stewart took the Fox channel to task for promoting the idea that there is a plot afoot to kill Christmas.
In his own, inimitable way, Jon demonstrated how Christmas had grown and flourished while his holiday of Hanukkah remained a simple eight days with the same uncomplicated trappings of dreidels, gelt and latkes.
Stewart made reference to the 12 days of Christmas, the fact that radio stations begin playing Christmas music right after Halloween, about the same time as stores begin decorating with blue plastic reindeer, pine cones, elves and such. What about the decision to open stores for Christmas shopping on Thanksgiving? Thus his challenge to Fox TV — A plot to kill Christmas? Really?
Well, John, I’m not given to conspiracy theories, but what you described as Christmas creep is most assuredly not Christmas.
Christmas is not elves or even Santa. Christmas isn’t aluminum deer and faux sleds. It isn’t houses festooned with thousands of lights that pulsate to a rock version of Jingle Bells.
It’s not Frosty the Snowman or Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire or Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer — nor is it crowded shopping malls, and strained bank accounts.
It’s not even a Christmas tree or presents underneath.
Most of what Jon described is the empty calories of marketing, an economic engine to drive up profits before the end of the year. They are a dilution of what is truly Christmas to the point that the true Holy Day is hard to find among the tinsel and outdoor lighting.
Christmas is far simpler and yet far more complicated. It rests on the belief that there is a love beyond us all that became like us, entered into our lives in a way that we could understand to show us the way.
You know — Peace on Earth, Good Will To Men!
For all of us, including me, it has become harder and harder to find that Christmas among the shopping, the baking, the parties and the hype that have no intrinsic meaning. It is hard to preserve the true meaning while fulfilling the variety of customs that have grown up around the holiday. What has been lost to children as they come to think of Christmas only in terms of glitter, gifting and getting?
But it’s not impossible to find it; it’s still is available to those who can push through the fluff while keeping their eyes on the ultimate prize.
Every now and then a bit of Christmas peeks through the onslaught of wretched excess. I heard one only this morning.
There it was a song on one of the “all Christmas songs” stations, a song that was about Christmas … “Mary, did you know … That your baby boy has walked where angels trod? And when you kiss your little boy, you’ve kissed the face of God.”
Halleluiah! Of course this was immediately followed by a cascade of “Jingle Bell Rock,” “It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas” and “Rudolph.”
So, I would tell Jon Stewart, if I could, to revel in the simple celebrations of Hanukkah, the Festival of Lights, to savor its religious and historical meanings unencumbered by the economic onslaught that has swallowed up Christmas.
And, just wondering now — What if that Christmas baby boy were here today? To which celebration would He be drawn?
