Tis the season

It is the best of seasons and the worst of seasons.

As followers of Christ, we celebrate the season of advent with candles and hymns. It is a quiet time. A time for prayer. A time to meditate over the humble circumstances of his birth. A time to be still and know God's presence.

Here is America it is also the season of consumption and waste. People are encouraged to spend as much as they possibly can on expensive presents for themselves and family members, binge on food and drink, and teach their children that only the good gets lots and lots of toys. Some even compete to hang enough lights on their house and yard to be seen from orbiting satellites. We call like to call this the "Christmas" season, but nothing about it is consistent with what Jesus taught his followers.

It borders on blasphemy to associate any part of this holiday with Christ. Every year, the buying frenzy for "Christmas" has people fighting over bargains and hard to find items. This year is no exemption. Here are some people in North Carolina shopping on Thanksgiving day.




Scenes like this one can be found in stores all over the nation. Brawls. Stabbings. Shootings. That seems like an obscene amount of aggression by people supposedly overcome with "joy."

Analysts dissect every aspect of the four day shopping spree that has gradually replaced the holiday formerly known as "Thanksgiving." They wring their hands over retail sales. The postmortem number-crunching on this year's shopping frenzy has been that all the hype and heavily-advertised bargains failed to boost cash register tallies. The marketing blitz brought record numbers of people to the stores but they spent less.

There is even a new shopping-related meme - "missional shopping."

That’s when someone heads to a store to buy a specific discounted item and then leaves, avoiding the impulse purchases that boost sales for retailers, especially during the holidays. This is likely to hurt retailers’ profit margins this year.

Missional shopping will lead to "panic sales" where merchants slash prices as the "Christmas" shopping season comes to a close.  Bloated year-end inventories are the proverbial lump of coal for retail giants with visions of sugar plum bonuses dancing in their heads.

Meanwhile many retail workers face long hours, low wages, and nagging despair. Here is an all too common story.

Chardé Nabors, a mother of two who works as a $9-an-hour cashier at Sears in the Chicago Loop, feels left behind by the holiday festivities, partly because she was scheduled to work from 7:30 p.m. Thanksgiving to 6 a.m. Friday. “I’m here watching shoppers buy all these items, and I’m working to help these people, and I can’t even buy my children the same products,” said Ms. Nabors, whose 3-year-old son wants a Spider-Man doll she cannot afford.

The "Christmas" shopping season is little more than a war on advent. None of the excesses of this ugly season have anything to do with celebrating the birth of Christ. The worship of Mammon has replaced and destroyed the spiritual meaning of this holiday. The Evil One has to plenty to celebrate. Perhaps it is long overdue for the people that believe in Jesus as messiah to reclaim this season. That is probably too much to hope for.