Heap Overrun

Please note: This post deals with religious, specifically Christian, subject matter that some people may find offensive. If you continue reading, please do not blame anyone but yourself if you are offended.

For a very long time, I've heard Christian groups bemoaning Christ being taken out of Christmas. The evidence of that isn't very hard to see; many retail employees no longer say Merry Christmas (instead preferring Happy Holidays or a similar generic phrase) out of fear of losing their job if someone is offended, you rarely see a bigger push for charitable donations and businesses and children compete to be the most excited about all the gifts that will be purchased. Even the very icon of a Western Christmas, Santa Claus, has been transformed from the generous Saint Nick, giving for the sake of giving, into the altar of avarice where each person kneels to intone their list of desires for the upcoming Christmas season.

So here's a radical suggestion, mostly to those Christians who lament Christ's forcible removal from Christmas but anyone should feel free to join in: let's not try to put Christ in Christmas. At all. Christ doesn't belong in what we, including most Christians, have turned Christmas into. Going to church as a child I learned a lot about Christ doing many good things, but I don't recall anything about Christ promoting the sort of behaviour that we see around Christmas. So before we decide that Christ belongs in our Christmas, answer a few questions:

• Many children have come to expect large amounts of gifts at Christmas and expect that their gifts will include all the very expensive things they ask for. Where does Christ promote fulfilling and promoting greed?
• Christmas advertising and marketing starts, if we're lucky, immediately after Halloween without even a breath given to Remembrance Day (or Veterans' Day in some countries). No consideration is given to the multitudes of veterans who served to protect our countries and made huge sacrifices. Many have died in service to their country. In thanks, these veterans who don't make money for businesses are pushed aside in favour of a concept that, while doing nothing beneficial for our countries, does make obscene amounts of money for businesses. Where does Christ promote allowing businesses to ignore people making huge sacrifices to promote spending money?
• Many children, and many adults, will talk about what they were given at Christmas. The person who received the "biggest gift" is often seen as somehow better. Where does Christ promote bragging about what you were given?
• Some people will instead (or also) make sure everyone knows about what they have done for others. Where does Christ promote bragging about what you have given or what you have done for people? Didn't Christ have some very specific words against this?
• Christmas is made out to be an event where you need plenty of money to participate and find enjoyment. Where does Christ promote events where the less-fortunate are automatically somehow less able to participate or are made to feel less adequate?
• The amount of people who treat retail employees badly is appalling any time of the year, but it seems to me that it gets much worse during Christmas. Where does Christ say that we should be rude to people whose entire job is to serve us?

That last question is something that every last Christian really needs to think about. Non-Christians are rude enough on their own, but Christians can be, in some ways, much worse. How many times have we heard about a Christian person or group raising a stink because someone said "Happy Holidays"? Because the music played in a store wasn't Christian music? That a manger scene wasn't in place? That Christmas trees weren't put up? That Christ wasn't placed front-and-centre of the whole holiday season? Is that really the way Christians should be trying to put Christ back into Christmas?

Would Christ even want to be part of what we've made Christmas into or part of what Christians are trying to make it? Christ didn't come into the world surrounded by people loudly proclaiming His arrival (He arrived quietly, in a barn, surrounded by animals), He didn't arrive by government decree (they crucified Him) and he certainly didn't arrive in response to loud and rude proclamations by people claiming to follow Him (He castigated them). So before you complain that Christ has been taken out of Christmas, ask yourself if He would want to be associated with what it has become, especially in the way some Christians demand. Ask yourself if Christ should be brought into Christmas in the way so many people demand, or if He should be brought into Christmas the way He came into the world.

More importantly, ask yourself if the Advent should even be part of Christmas. Christmas and consumerism and greed (both corporate and individual) are almost inextricably entangled but the Advent is still unscathed, if rarely mentioned beyond the Advent wreath.