One friend responds...

Lindy, it's not necessarily all about you... :-)

I wish I could do my best Bill Clinton impression and say "I feel your pain." but I can't.

This is one (of many) tempests that I can't seem to get all atwitter over.

Now, I may be one of the most devout "bah humbug"ers ever. I mean, I love advent and nativity...but I don't decorate, I don't buy a Christmas tree, and I rarely send out Christmas Cards. But I try, deep within my little heart, to celebrate Christmas. I truly do... (mmm, Immanuel. God with us. We shall have a sign, a child will be born and he will be known as Immanuel. What a fabulous theme.)

I feel ambivalent. Target and Wal-Mart and whoever else we want to pick on are in a simple business: Separate you from your dollars so that they, the company, make money. Preferably truckloads of it. They're free to market fir trees as Christmas trees, holiday trees, Chanakah Trees, firewood or freshly murdered Colorado forest. That's their prerogative.

And consumers are free to pitch a hissy-fit whenever they want in order to get their way. This is their prerogative.

(there's a whole tangent I'd like to explore aboutconnoting and denoting meaning for holidays. I mean, seriously....A Christian is going to buy a tree for his or her own symbolic use, and cares whether the store calls it a "Christmas" tree or not? So much for the mystery of symbols....)

I watched the Charlie Brown Christmas Special theother week--that's probably what did me in. For how many decades have we been decrying the commercialization of Christmas? So I say "fine", let them secularize the entire month of December. I'm content with it being the aegis of the church to note the high holy season without relying on plastic reindeer and inflatable Santas to communicate our message.

How /do/ we balance our commercial interests and apluralistic society? Because there is a part of methat feels for people put off by the whole themes ofChristmas. Free enterprise is certainly a different beast than state sanctioning, but it was small Christian sects who came to the colonies seeking freedom OF and freedom FROM religion. What does that mean today? How much are we willing to set aside ourown culture to ensure the peaceful coexistance withothers? How much of our religion must manifest itself in public profiteering?

I can understand why businesses seek the least common denominator, so that they can never be accused ofstepping too far afield of the mytical "center" of public opinion. What worries me is the impact of this on individuals. I heard a woman at work talking to someone on the phone saying "Merry Christmas! Oh,wait, I can't say that..." It was probably a joke, but how does the corporate rhetoric of pluralism affect the individual? Because that's the beauty ofthis country and this society...you (and my coworker) are free to wish Merry Christmas to whomever you want (and the cashier is free to scowl as much as she wants). We are free to patronize, evangelize, criticize or antagonize. We just have to concede that everyone else has those same rights.

So. What do we want? Are we willing to decommercialize our own holidays and /or accept a free-market view of our society (every Christmas aisle begets a Chanakah aisle begets a Ramadan aisle begetsa Kwanzaa aisle)? Do we want to continue to see the Christmas season as it is filtered through Target's ads, Budweiser's horse-drawn beer cart and every other company's marketing department?

I don't know. I'm content to let Target do their thing and I'll do my thing. That's a nice Libertarian point of view, isn't it?

Lindy, I guess I should bein NH and you should be in the Bible (so long as it isKJV) Belt... :-)

Merry X-mas!
bks

This individual gave me permission to publish his email. Feel free to respond to his insight. I'd like to see healthy debate here, whether you agree or disagree, or perhaps can't decide.