O Come, All Ye Faithful
Somehow, those words have been lost by many as the meaning of Christmas. Christmas is supposed to be a celebration of the birth of Jesus. It’s intended as a remembrance of one that came into this world to live as an example for the rest of us. A thanksgiving of sorts for the birth of one that gave the world the path to live less worldly. Jesus preached about the depravity of worshiping material possessions more than anything else. And rightly so. “Money”, the pursuit of it, the covet of it, the selfishness and insecurity that invariably comes with it, causes more pain and suffering than anything else in this world.
And, what exactly have we done to Christmas, the celebration of the birth of one that eschews material wealth? We have turned it into a celebration of money and all the wealth and joy that we are told it will bring us. Exactly the opposite of the teachings of the one the day was intended to celebrate.
Harry Gordon Selfridge, the American founder of the British department-store chain Selfridges and the first to post in his stores the number of shopping days until Christmas, understood that retailers must seduce their customers; he titled his history of merchant cultures “The Romance of Commerce.” In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Selfridge and other retailers used the Christmas season to spin a fantasy of a happier life, invoking the Victorian era’s emphasis on children and the domestic sphere. –New Yorker NOVEMBER 28, 2013 EVERYTHING YOU KNOW ABOUT BLACK FRIDAY IS WRONG
POSTED BY AMY MERRICK http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/currency/2013/11/everything-you-know-about-black-friday-is-wrong.html
We all should endeavor to live less complicated, simpler, and less selfish lives. Supplemental to that, we should strive to make Christmas less commercial.
Let’s not be romanced and seduced by materialism, but rejoice in freedom from it.