Posted on 11/11/2003 1:24:41 AM PST by JohnHuang2
© 2003 WorldNetDaily.com
The holiday suckers are back and it's worse than ever.
I'm not talking about people taken in by holiday scams, but people who are sucking the meaning from our traditional holidays and leaving them hollow remnants of meaningless drek.
I saw it in mid-August when I stopped in one of my favorite stores, specializing in items from all over the world, including specialty food and wines.
It was summer, and then I went into the store and was hit between the eyes with their full-bore displays for Halloween. In August? Yes. Candy, masks, decorations. They had it all.
I had it, too! I was disgusted. Talk about rushing the season. I thought that about took the cake, but I was wrong. It was just the beginning.
Newspapers were filled with Halloween themes, recipes, party ideas and costume suggestions. People now decorate their houses – and not with just a few ghost pictures on the windows. Lawns are filled with graves and tombstones, trees are draped with cobwebs and hedges are strung with pumpkin lights.
Halloween has morphed into a major holiday celebration for adults. Whatever happened to little kids trick-or-treating? The last time I was home for the annual begging, the only "children" who showed up were high-school students. A six-footer looks pretty silly acting like a 5-year-old.
By early September, it was "beginning to look a lot like Christmas." Normally, that would mean December. Not now. These days, Christmas hits at Labor Day and picks up speed from there.
In fact, if you wait until mid-December to shop, you'll find everything picked over. If you need cards or decorations, you'll be lucky if anything's left.
Stores begin Christmas clearances before the 25th. Sale catalogs arrive in mid-December. Talk about taking the glow off the holiday – especially if that special gift, for which you paid full price, is marked down 50 percent before you even wrap it!
One year, the day after Christmas, I went into the hardware store to buy a couple of bulbs for the Christmas lights. They had none. They told me they were already packed away for next year! This was the same store that had Christmas merchandise displayed weeks before Thanksgiving.
Thanksgiving? What's that? It's become one of the most ignored traditional American holidays. Thanksgiving commemorates the colonists giving thanks to God for their survival in the new world.
Unfortunately, that part of the holiday is gone. It's become turkey day and football. The only stores really using the theme in advertising are supermarkets – get your turkey and trimmings. And don't forget the beer for the bowl games.
Even at that, the word "Thanksgiving" is rarely seen. When was the last time you saw pictures of pilgrims? Or anything about their giving thanks – meaning, to God. Don't hold your breath. God isn't allowed.
Then there's Christmas. Oh. Sorry. Not now. Now it's the holiday season. There's Santa, maybe. A decorated tree. Yes. Stockings? Yes. Gifts? Of course, that's what it's all about, isn't it? Well, not really, but you'd never know.
In the public square you won't see anything concerning the true meaning of Christmas. No crosses, creche, Jesus, holy family, wise men, Bible or God. Religion has been stripped from the public face of Christmas – despite the fact that it and Thanksgiving are national holidays, the religious origins have all but been wiped out in public.
In schools, children are not taught the truth of the holidays. In addition, there are no Christmas vacations, Christmas carols, Christmas pageants or displays. Everything is generic and non-religious.
The supreme irony is that virtually all decorations sold are made in atheistic Communist China, likely by slave labor. The hypocrisy is clear when the "made in China" label is on nativity figures and angels.
Then, there's multiculturalism. The media do special features on Ramadan and Kwanzaa and, sometimes, even Hanukkah if they want to appear ecumenical. We will be "educated" up the wazoo on these ceremonies, but you'd be hard pressed to find any mention of Gospel readings of the birth of Jesus, who He was, midnight mass or the meaning of it all.
And now, we have to deal with the ABC-TV network news airing a one-hour special on a fictional theory of Jesus being married.
Do you think they'd have the courage to do a one-hour special about the sex life of Muhammad?
Like the drip of water wearing away rock, it's clearer than ever that the religious foundation of this country is clearly, and with intent, being subverted. We know what happens to a structure when its foundation is destroyed. That's what they want. We're too close for comfort.
She will acknowledge your existence, but that's as far as you'll ever get.
LOL. Cathryn, you're not taking care of your fans! ;-)
As with all things, Christmas is what you make of it. In this house, we still do Christmas up right. What is shown on TV and what is displayed in the stores has very little to do with it. Kwaanza and Ramadan? What's that? And who cares?
Walk thru Wal-Mart or ANY big box store and just TRY to find the word
HELLO!
It's HIS
You'd think there'd be SOMETHING about SALVATION of your souls mentioned SOMEWHERE!
I'm sorry. Hi, Don!
;-)
Maybe it's because of where we live, but our Walmarts have a HUGH selection of Christian books. And at Christmas and Easter, there's plenty of religious decorations, from the tasteful to the tacky.
Not sure where else you'd need to look.
The commericalization of these holidays is about money. I don't have to spend mine on it if I don't want to.
Amen, and like Dickens' Scrooge, I've learned to keep and practice Christmas all 365 days of the year! The Spirit of Christmas present, and the Living Christ whose birth that Spirit celebrates, are alive every day of the year. I choose to honor Christ and Christmas every day; others may wish to confine Him and the celebration of His Coming to December 25th.
Ha! Having people plead to keep the Christmas accoutrements in the back room until the Day itself arrives is comparable to Scrooge asking the Spirit of Christmas past to douse her light, for it hurts his eyes! Every cheap thread of tinsel, every artificial tree and plastic bulb, every clanging music box - no matter how out of tune with the real Christmas Carol - point ultimately to the One whom these things celebrate.
People think I'm nuts but I start celebrating the Christmas season November 1. That is the day the Christmas music comes out (and I have lots of it - I collect Christmas recordings) and the day I start hanging up the lights. I pretty much have to start the lights around then as it takes me 3-4 weeks to get the house properly done. If you've ever seen the Chevy Chase "Christmas Vacation" movie, you will get the general idea of what I try to do with my house. Only I concentrate the lights indoors, where I can see them. I run lights floor to ceiling in every downstairs room to the point where you don't need to turn a regular light on in the entire downstairs! I also do outdoor lights but not as many.
And they don't come down until after the Super Bowl!
I find that lighting up the house like this during the coldest and darkest months of the year puts everybody in a cheerful mood. Also, getting the work done before Thanksgiving means that we can spend a lot of time between Thanksgiving and Christmas just sitting around the fire and watching all the blinking lights (tree goes up the first weekend of December).
..and that is where?
Perfectly stated.
If you don't get excited about store displays and don't watch a lot of television, then Christmas is still a religious celebration. That has not diminished at all.
Thanksgiving is, thankfully, still very uncommercial.
Halloween: This year, on October 31, I came home from work at 5 pm to my completely undecorated house, helped the kids carve a pumpkin, put a few plastic decorations outside and took the kids trick or treating. The decorations were down by 8 pm and the pumpkins were in the garbage the next morning. Three hours of Halloween is about all that I can take.
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