Sunday, January 4, 2015

Where Do You Fit?

Where do You Fit?
Luke 2:1-7
            A certain radio sports commentator has a character he calls “The Old Curmudgeon.”  Whenever he wants to let off steam about an issue (or a bunch of issues) he becomes The Old Curmudgeon.  This allows him to be a grumpy old man and get away with it.  Today I’m going to be a grumpy old man—at least for a while.
            I’m writing this four days after Christmas.  This afternoon we were in one of the local grocery stores to pick up a few items.  There was not a Christmas decoration to be seen.  I expected to find the leftover Father Christmas and snowman figures at a greatly reduced price.  Not one was in view.  The shelf space devoted to Christmas stuff was either empty or already filling up with boxes of Valentine’s Day candy.  I didn’t check out the greeting card display, but I imagine the same thing was true there.  In stores where they have been playing Christmas music all day every day, those recordings have been put away for another year, or the radio station has been changed.  Carols are so last week. Actually, I suspect the people who work in those stores are relieved.  I know I couldn’t spend every work day for a month listening to the same—mostly inane—songs endlessly repeated.
            “Christmas is over!  Clear out the leftover merchandise.  Let’s get on to the next big holiday.  No time for sentiment or contemplating what Christmas should mean.  Time to get busy promoting the next occasion to overspend—and Valentine’s Day is a good one!  Candy! Flowers! Cards! Jewelry!  Come on, folks!  Sell!  Sell!  Sell!  Spend!  Spend!  Spend!”
            Have you noticed that Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving, for those of you who have been in isolation for the past two months) isn’t special anymore?  Stores open Thanksgiving night for people who want a head start.  Even worse, stores offer “Black Friday Sale Prices” for weeks ahead of the actual day.  They’re afraid they’ll miss out on making money.  They bombard us with advertising and special pricing so early that Thanksgiving might just disappear.  If this goes any further we’ll have Christmas sales beginning right after July Fourth.
            I’m a great fan of the newspaper comic strips.  For the past few days Curtis (about an African-American family living in a big city) has shown the TV set advertising Kwanzaa sales just like Christmas sales.  The father is bemoaning the fact that not even Kwanzaa (a non-sacred holiday by the way) is sacred anymore.  Commercialism knows no bounds.
I have no problem with the secular celebration of Christmas.  While my wife and I stopped buying each other Christmas presents years ago (not in protest, but because we enjoy shopping together), I still remember my excitement as a kid on Christmas morning—and I wouldn’t deny any child (or adult either) that feeling of joy. 
            I wish those of us who call ourselves by Christ’s name would spend as much time contemplating what the birth of Jesus Christ has meant—and continues to mean—to the world.  Perhaps we could spend the week between Christmas Day and New Years’ Day focusing on Jesus’ birth and its meaning.
To be a Christian means to stand apart from the crowd by refusing to be dominated by the prevailing culture.  It means living in the reality that we are different from the majority of people.  We understand that the birth of the Christ Child more than two thousand years ago has not only changed the world, but has also changed us.

            Recently I saw a sign outside a church.  It asked: “Are you part of the inn crowd or one of the stable few?”  It’s time to make up our minds which group we belong to.

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