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12.19.01
My friend Henry is a heretic. Sort of. Okay, actually, not at all. Don't start reacting until you've read all he has to say on the subject:
Here's my Christmas deal. Have you ever not wanted to do something because
you were told to do it? Let's start in November. Saturday after
Thanksgiving every year, we need to get a tree and put it up. This is
usually not difficult, but definitely time consuming. Selecting a tree is
like delivering a death sentence. "Let's chop this one down and let it die
a slow death in our living room, honey. It looks nice."
Anyway, the rest
of that weekend is spent getting the decorations out, buying lights that
work, rearranging furniture, and on and on. Now that it's December and the
tree is up, the same thrash follows for decorating the house. I'm not
usually as involved in this as the tree, but it consumes all of my wife's
spare time for at least two weeks. I'm not going to tell you anything that
you don't already know about the hassle of Christmas shopping, but compare the amount of time, logistics and money spent with what is actually
accomplished. Everyone I know spends around $1K at Christmas and, with the
possible exception of gifts for our spouses, how often do we buy something
that the recipient really wants or needs? I suspect that you and Bob are
able to budget for this, but most people enter January even deeper in the
red than the rest of the year.
As though this is not enough, there is a compulsion to spend the entire
month baking an endless parade of goodies that certainly taste good but none
of which are healthy choices. Everyone goes through the day adrift in a sea
of fatty and sugary snacks, but I'm not allowed to have orange chicken for
lunch because it's bad for me. Huh?
I don't have a good voice, but give the impression of singing on pitch, so
my punishment is weekly choir rehearsal. By the time we actually perform in
late December, I just want it to be done with it. Overdoses of Christmas
music usually make me grumpy, and this year will not prove to be the
exception. Your average Christmas carol is a mediocre composition to begin
with and efforts toward "improvement" by modern arrangements often remove
the sentimental charm of the original and render the piece both boring and
complicated.
Contemporary Christmas music is no better, as one hip-hop rendition of
Silent Night is one too many. Lyrically, Christian music has attempted to
either return to an even TRUER meaning of Christmas than we did last year,
or drum up emotions for emotion's sake (I keep hearing this song about some
penniless kid trying to buy a pair of shoes on Christmas Eve for his sick
mother who dies on Christmas day. Please.) The few songs that are good
just wind up getting played into the ground.
It all seems to be for a good cause, however. Secular Christmas is "all
about giving" which sounds nice, and among Christians you're a hypocrite
unless you kill yourself every year celebrating Jesus' birthday.
Here is
where my heresy sets in. Jesus actually told us what to do to remember him
and it's not an annual birthday party. In fact, communion is the only event
or ceremony that I regard as sacred, simply because that's the biblical
instruction. Not that it's wrong to want to celebrate His birthday, but
we've turned the remembrance into a smothering obligation, the results of
which are obesity, exhaustion and debt.
(End of Henry's explanation, beginning of Suzanne's debrief) So, what do you think? Something to think about, is what I think.
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