It's About The Arrival Of Shoppers

In the so-called "war on Christmas," I agree with this blogger. I find it amazing that the religious right and other wing nuts who are intent on manufacturing another "war" on something or with someone are overly concerned with displays in retail stores and the verbiage on Christmas cards. Let's get real here. They call the day after Thanksgiving Black Friday because it is the busiest shopping day of the year. It's about gross consumerism and blind capitalism and somehow I don't think that the people who camped out at places like Walmart and Best Buy would camp outside of their church to be first in line for a Christmas service.

It’s rather difficult to imagine Christianity as a persecuted religion, at least in North America. Christianity is the world’s dominant faith. At an estimated 2.1 billion adherents, Christianity almost doubles the size of its nearest competitor, Islam. In the United States, almost two-thirds of the population identifies itself as Christian. As the predominant religion of the West, Christianity knows no bounds to its power, wealth, and influence.

It’s true that ham-fisted school districts and advertising directors have, from time to time, taken multicultural political correctness into the hinterlands of stupidity. I know of nobody, for instance, who calls a Christmas tree a “holiday tree,” or who — for that matter — celebrates the evergreen as the ancient pagan symbol it is. I probably don’t rub elbows with enough Neo-Pagans.

If there’s a threat to Christmas, it’s not being forced to co-exist with Kwanzaa at an elementary school pageant, no matter what this overwrought Rutherford Foundation fundraiser might claim. Nor is it the indignity of opening a non-religious holiday card by the mailbox one brisk December morning.

The real threat to Christmas is the cold, calculated conversion of a meaningful religious holiday into a retail event.In the United States, the real "reason for the season" is quite clear: spending. Most major retailers would collapse without a decent Christmas season. Christmas sales are everything, which is why the first weekend after Thanksgiving’s register receipts are greeted with such breathless anticipation. Christmas is no longer about the arrival of the Christ child. It’s about the arrival of shoppers.