Christmas morning, you wake up in blissful anticipation of all your gifts under the tree. If you were like me, the excitement kept you up over night and you waited hours for your parents to wake so the gift unwrapping ritual could commence. Children got to enjoy the fact that, for some reason, Santa brought us gifts for Jesus’ birthday. Adults got to celebrate the joyous occasion with most of our beloved family. The most wonderful time of the year, for me, has lost its childhood magic and failed to champion the ideas of sharing. The Christmas season, a time of jolly, a time of giving, a time of love has become instead a time of worship, not of Jesus, but of capitalism.
Many children are taught to believe two myths about December 25th, Santa will bring you gifts if you’re good and that Jesus was born on that day. These are two beliefs that can peak a sense of supernatural fascination to children and lay groundwork to instill good values later on. The idea of doing good with the hope that it will lead to recieving good in your life is a positive principle to share with your children. Celebration of religious holidays can bring about times of profound spiritual awakening. Even if these concepts are completly lost on on children, at the very least Christmas is a time for family to come together and share with one another, undconditional love. These ideas have slowly but surely been twisted into ugly shows of what seems to be the new Christmas spirit. The joy of giving is replaced with anxiety and an obnoxious focus on recieving. TIme with loved ones isn’t cherished as it should be, it’s looked upon as a task to be completed to its minimum. Individuals who took Christmas as a time to remember and honor Jesus instead use it as a time to attack those who don’t share such beliefs. Looking at the way Jesus is used as a symbol of Christmas shows a different “war on Christmas” than the one we commonly hear about.
A lack of snowflakes or reindeer on your Starbucks cup is not an attack on Christmas or Christian values, it’s a marketing decision. The fact that marketing decisions are viewed as an indication of where the spirit of Christmas lies is very telling, people hold the right to sell Jesus closer to their heart than they do true Christian ideals. Many of the churches that color themselves outraged about Starbucks cups and nativity scenes also find themselves apathetic towards charity for the poor and lacking in love of non-christians. During this time of year, many Christians adopt a “holier than thou” approach and ignore many of the most important tenets of love associated with the faith. Just as Christians are forgetting the central ideas of the faith, many of us Americans are forgetting about what Christmas can and should mean.
Getting a job changed Christmas and it’s meaning for me completly, I was finally one of the contributors to the gift giving instead of just a reciever. It was nice to be able to feel as if I was giving back to those I love the most, but over time my job changed the meaning of Christmas for me in a more profound way. I’m going to be spending Christmas Eve and Day at work because above all else, Christmas is about money. Capitalism takes no days off and millions of Americans lose time with their families as a result. I find myself every year bartering Thanksgiving and Christmas with my boss because time with your family is sold to us a privelege that many people simply cannot afford. I will be working and what I’ll contiue to see for the most part are people buying $10 McDonalds gift cards so they can pretend that they give a shit about Christmas and the spirit of giving. I’ll see sad children who couldn’t get a toy for Christmas because they needed food for the week. I’ll see people who are exceptionally stressed and irritable because of the pressures associated with gift giving. Chistmas has become a microcosm of some of the evils of capitalistic worship, time is money and Christmas is when we spend alot of one while we lose the other.
My oldest sister has always done her best to make sure that everyone gets a present on Christmas that they can be happy with. A spirit of giving coupled with a love of her familiy is what motivated my sister to make sure that everyone recieved something. I have 5 sisters, 4 brothers and including my parents and extensions of family we have Christmas gatherings that are large in number. This is important because even thought the numbers in the family continued to grow my sister’s giving never failed or faltered. This spirit of giving is contrasted against indignant responses to the presents recieved, too often we see thousands of tweets complaining that the white iPhone instead of black was given or that we got a new tv instead of a laptop. I’ve watched this attitude become more prevelant in society and with that I’ve watched my sister’s spirit of giving turn into an anxiety that she won’t be able to give us enough. Christmas was a special time to experience the love of my family but as I’ve grown, I’ve seen love twisted into an economic burden. Christmas should be more about gifts than presents; The love and time of our family is the gift, the cool things we get are the presents, cherish the former, be thankful for the latter.
Many people say Merry Christmas because they want to remember the birth of Jesus. Many say Merry Christmas to promote a time of love and cheer. Many of us say Merry Christmas to keep the spirit of giving alive. This year I will be saying Happy Holidays because all of that is reindeer shit now. Christmas is time to focus on the fact that I love my family and am thankful for everything that they’ve given to me and will, I’m certain, continue to give. For that, I’ll always love Christmas but as long as we carry on with our worship of Santa Christ and ignore what’s really special about the season I’ll come to hate it more and more. Maybe I’m just being a Grinch about it all but I feel like at some point, Christmas was stolen from me.
Jameson's Brain 