Where did Christmas Go

As I sit here, pondering the past few weeks or months, trying to come up with a respectable post I realized that the Christmas season was over. To me the Christmas season runs from Thanksgiving to New Years Eve. The reason it starts with Thanksgiving is that is when the pre-Christmas sales begin and the reason it ends with New Years Eve as that is when people turn their Christmas lights off. Why don’t I call it “The Holiday season”? I don’t because I am a Christian and the “Christmas season” is about celebrating the birth of Christ. There are others that celebrate their religion during this same period and they call their celebrations something other than Christmas, such as Kwanza or Hanukah and are all celebrating something other than the birth of Christ so I don’t blame them for wanting to call the time by a different name. That is their right. Don’t ever minimize or make a mockery of that last sentence because a lot of us had it in our heads that one of things we were doing over in Vietnam and the North Atlantic, back in the 60’s and 70’s, was protecting that right called the “Freedom of Religion”. At least that is what we told ourselves as we buried our friends and comrades back then and even more so today.

Back in the day [whatever that means] Christ was definitely in our Christmas celebrations. Christmas was in the school play; it was still in the Church in the sermons, the church play; it was in the shopping, the wrapping paper, and the music as we shopped; it was everywhere. Christmas was for kids and celebrating Christ.

It slowly started getting different as each year passed. Christmas became about presents, not just for kids but for everyone. Now the internet has rolled in and it is about something else. There are very few web sites, that we use to purchase our presents, that wish us a Merry Christmas but rather send us a Happy Holidays greeting while silent praying that they haven’t just offended some person or a group. As we shop those web sites, we don’t find much in the way of Christmas music which keeps us in the “Spirit” of the true meaning of Christmas. Yard decorations became about outdoing your neighbor, or the whole town, and nothing about the birth of the Christ child. There are less manger scenes displayed and fewer stars and wise men are depicted. It is all about lights as LED lights make their debut along with super obnoxious florescent colored light strings. What happened to the Christmas TV specials? All are now probably relegated to PBS to save. No Perry Como, Bing Crosby, Barbara Mandrel, or Dean Martin.

I just read an editorial in our local paper [yup we still have one] complaining about the same thing as I have and she said in summation that it has stopped becoming “Christmas” and is now “Santa Day”.

Merry Christmas to all