Christmas

If I were still a Christian, I'd definitely be joining this guy's War on Christmas.

War on Christmas? A war on what Christmas has become? A war on worshiping consumerism in the sacred halls of Wal-Mart, Target, and Best Buy while the world is swallowed up in the darkness of not having enough food to eat, a place to live, clean water to drink, access to reasonable health care?

Sign me up, because I refuse to let the story of my faith be co-opted by corporations who only wish to convince us that we are privileged and we do deserve what we have more than other and we should revel in our abundance even as we celebrate the birth of the child who laid in a feeding trough, who lived his life with no place to lay his head, who told us that “just as you do it unto the least of these so to you do it unto me, a child who gave up his very life that we might understand what true love looks like.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the evolution of Christmas, and I’ve been thinking that there is a lot about the current practice that we can admire.

Peace and good will, of course, and cookies and candy canes, and happy kids – and this is also the time we think the most about those less fortunate, as do Jews and Muslims, who also have holiday celebrations this time of the year that include a component of charity.

But if there is anything that I could change about the modern practice of Christmas, it would be the installation of Santa Claus as an icon of consumer spending, more or less to the exclusion of everything else.

As an intellectual exercise, I started thinking about what a different Santa might be like; today’s story lays out who a few candidates might be for “Santa 2.0” and why.

So go grab a cookie, and, perhaps, a refreshing beverage…and let’s have some post-Christmas fun.

Emergency rooms see approximately 217,000 toy-related injuries each year. But the good news is tragedies from toys are most often injuries and not deaths. On average, only 15 children younger than 14 die from toy-related injuries each year according to Safe Kids USA. Choking on small parts is the most frequent cause of toy-related death.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays everyone. My Dad said if I wanted to I could tell you something here. I just got home last week from a cruise to and from the Persian Gulf and my Dad has shown me the stuff he wrote about our cruise here. I got to read what you wrote back and you guys are really nice.

Recently while walking the streets of downtown Raleigh and seeing the large numbers of homeless calling places like Moore Square home, I was reminded of a Christmas tradition my family had started...

Put the CHRIST back in CHRISTMAS!
JESUS is the REASON for the SEASON!
It's not a Holiday Tree, it's a CHRISTMAS TREE!

Sad, isn't it?

Can you believe it? I bet you can. I actually bet most people don't really mind it either. But the House of Representatives voted to officially recognize the importance of Christmas and the Christian faith.

With another peace march approaching, I would guess that the leaders of the peace movement are quite excited to see if the President's low approval ratings and the low approval ratings of the situation in Iraq will bring a united call for immediate withdrawal.

At my university, I remember the early peace movement well and attended the few debates on campus about the need to go to war. What struck me most was the absence of any groups representing what I would think of as the middle ground or the mainstream. There were a few hawkish, young republican neo-cons who were dwarfed by a much larger group of hippy types and punks (I’m trying to descriptive, and intend no offense.) They were outfitted in their respective uniforms from Hot Topic or from the Salvation Army. They were also, based on what they had to say, completely devoid of any specific reasoning regarding the specific question of invading Iraq and Afghanistan.

never the less: Merry Christmas

Another powerful video by Ava Lowery.