Christmas Spirit!?!

This is going to be an angry rant. I am just warning you ahead of time. Reading through the news yesterday, I noticed two stories about how absolutely idiotic mobs can be. In the first story, a Walmart in Secaucus, New Jersey reported some pushing and shoving as people entered the store to begin shopping on "Black Friday." Pushing and shoving, to go shopping. That is idiotic, childish, and deeply sinful behavior. One woman had to be transported by ambulance for an injury to her leg. People - people just like you and me - regular, everyday people who have jobs and families and all the rest behaved like animals simply in order to shop. But wait, as they say in the infomercials, there's more. Just when you thought that we have not become depraved enough (yes, I used the word depraved), comes a story out of New York, where a Walmart employee was actually trampled to death by customers in pursuit of bargains. When told about the employee's death, some shoppers said they needed to keep shopping. My only hope is that those who were responsible were caught on videotape and will be persecuted for their crime. While I am sure that these stories are aberrations, while I know that they are exceptions to the rule, they say quite a lot about our national character. Blame falls first and foremost on the Christian Church itself. We have allowed our sacred holiday to become completely commercialized. We were only too happy to see our nation celebrate "our" holiday. We didn't question that the holiness of the holy day of Christmas was eroding away. And now, we are reaping what we have sewn. The church needs to wake up and realize that the holiness of Christmas is not derived from our ability to get nativity scenes placed in public squares. That is a meaningless and empty gesture. The only way that we can win Christmas back for ourselves is to keep it truly holy, to not buy into the assinine idea that the appropriate way to celebrate the birth of our Lord is to go into debt. I challenge all Christians, myself included, to try something different this year, to actually make an effort to keep Christmas holy. Gifts are fine and good. But, gifts are not the true meaning of Christmas. Neither is "being nice" or "family" as we see depicted in so many sappy movies. God incarnate in the life of a small child - and the great mystery that that event represents - this is the true meaning of Christmas. What does it mean for our lives that God not only became one of us, but became a child and submitted himself to our care? That is the real question that we should be asking oursleves during the season of Advent. Not, where is the best sale? The church has abandoned one of its holiest days to the world. It is time that we take Christmas back, at least within our own lives. Maybe then we can serve as a true witness to others to the love of Christ. Thus ends my angry rant. God bless us everyone.