It’s beginning to look a lot like …


  • The Advent sea­son begins today, and not a moment too soon, eh? I had com­plained in past years about what the buy­ing mar­ket does to Christ­mas — I think every Chris­t­ian does. In my life­time, I’ve seen the itchy sales pitches go from being back­ground noise that started after Thanks­giv­ing to being a truly obnox­ious drum­beat that starts five min­utes after Hal­loween night. “What, are you going to just SIT there, eat­ing candy corn?? Get over it! Christ­mas is COMING!! Get the car keys — you’ve got to BUY THINGS!!” (In that way, we can iron­i­cally give this “hol­i­day” the vic­tory over Hal­loween. Since Hal­loween only makes you buy candy, Christ­mas out­ranks it — at this rate, it will sub­sume it com­pletely in another 10 years or so, whether the Goth crowd likes it or not.)

    ‘Tis the sea­son to get tired of hear­ing “Tis the season”

    I turned on one of radio sta­tions and heard Josh Groban singing “O Holy Night,” which is one of my very favorite songs to hear … WHEN it’s within a lunar month of the actual Holy Night. I snapped the radio off faster (I’m embar­rassed to admit) than I prob­a­bly would’ve if I’d heard some offen­sive lyrics. But for good­ness’ sake! I thought I had seen this mis­sion creep of back­dat­ing the so-called Hol­i­day Sea­son go as far as it could rea­son­ably go. And then, this year, all bets are off. There are cable chan­nels that have already started marathons of (com­pletely awful) hol­i­day shows. And the adver­tise­ments make it look like Decem­ber 25 is the day after tomorrow.

    All the same, some­thing in me just can’t judge the retail world too harshly this year. We do get it, right? As bizarre a twist as it is, this one feast of the Church cal­en­dar has become the occa­sion that gen­er­ates a tremen­dous amount of the prof­its retail­ers need to stay open for the rest of the year. (Accord­ing to this link Greg found for me, Novem­ber and Decem­ber sales account for 25% of annual prof­its — amaz­ing.) I know that “prof­its” is a bit of a dirty word for us, but with the econ­omy on life sup­port, can I really blame mer­chan­dis­ers for push­ing every but­ton they’ve got?

    Do your duty! Go into debt!

    I don’t fault them for crank­ing up the machine this early. But I do worry about all this panic and how it’s affect­ing these guys. I’m start­ing to get the impres­sion that the next threat to our free will may not be com­ing from dic­ta­tors who demand our fealty but from a hun­gry mar­ket­ing behe­moth that comes closer all the time to demand­ing – not ask­ing — that we buy too much and too often. I don’t think most of us really want to con­sider how much energy is directed toward con­trol­ling that most insignif­i­cant ele­ment of our life — our Buy­ing Behav­ior. But increas­ingly, I’m hear­ing that it’s the most vital thing I’m doing for my country’s future. That’s just twisted.

    That might just be me get­ting para­noid. But there’s a thin, high-pitched note of hys­te­ria in all this forced good cheer, and it’s kind of disturbing.

    That’s prob­a­bly not the bright­est note to sound at the very begin­ning of the won­der­ful sea­son of Advent, but I sup­pose it’s the one to get out of the way. I’m look­ing for­ward to this time, to get­ting out my Advent cal­en­dar and begin­ning to see the bench­marks that tick off the days to the Feast. But for the next cou­ple weeks, I’ll prob­a­bly keep the radio off in my car and mute even more TV com­mer­cials than usual, not because the world ISN’T talk­ing about Christ­mas, but because it IS. Or rather, they’re putting the Church’s vocab­u­lary to use for a sales pitch. God, have mercy on this coun­try and on the times we live in.

    Blessed Advent, everyone.


    Related posts:

    1. Decem­ber 2
    2. Do I need a lit­tle Christmas?
    3. Quick Hal­loween re-cap
    4. On the eighth day of Christmas …
    5. Begin­ning to Pray by Anthony Bloom

    November 15th, 2011 | Grace | 2 Comments | Tags: , , , , , ,

2 Responses and Counting...

  • pho­tini 11.15.2011

    My mother-in-law came from a VERY super­sti­tious fam­ily. Every­thing was couched in terms of “luck.” She was adamant that it was “bad luck” to sing any Christ­mas songs until after Thanks­giv­ing din­ner was fin­ished. I can remem­ber her shriek­ing if any­one started to hum a Christ­mas carol. She would throw her hands up to her face and yell, “Stop! Stop! It’s bad luck!” I’m not sure what she thought would hap­pen if any­one sang a carol before din­ner, but what­ever it was, it was too ter­ri­ble for words. I think some­times her boys did it just to get a rise out of her.

    I used to think it was all pretty funny, but I con­fess that now I will turn off a radio sta­tion that plays music “too early.”

    The ques­tion is, “what is too early?” Can we sing car­ols dur­ing the nativ­ity fast? What about singing “Christ is born. Glo­rify Him.” on the eve of the pre­sen­ta­tion of the Theotokos? Is any­time after Thanks­giv­ing okay? Do we begin 4 weeks before Christ­mas (West­ern Church’s Advent)? What about the last week­end of Novem­ber like the Christkin­dle marts in Germany?

    The older I get, the longer I want to wait. I want to savor the “prep time.” Too often so much cel­e­brat­ing is done before the feast, that every­one is tired of it when it comes. I want to antic­i­pate, not cel­e­brate, so that when the feast arrives I can enjoy it.

  • walk­wall­fall

    Yay for christmas!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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