Today is Monday, November 10th about 10:05am and it's warm and sunny outside and I'm writing my message for the December newsletter. I feel as if I have walked into Wal-Mart a week or two before Halloween, and I am walking through isles of Christmas decorations!
I don't know if you have ever noticed this or not, but I am kind of a last minute person. This seems to drive a lot of the people around me, nuts. This article has to be done TODAY because of the schedule of the coming weeks. So, once again I need to just get over all this advanced planning stuff and get on with it.
But before we get off this preplanning scheduling thing, have you ever noticed what happens in Wal-Mart after the main selling event is over? The next day, all the stuff they were trying to sell you and me concerning that special holiday, is gone. And if you look closely, you'll find remnants thrown into shopping carts, marked "50% OFF" or "Buy One Get One". Just a few days prior they tried to convince us that we needed this stuff to properly enjoy that special holiday, now you can get it for half price, if you're interested. My guess is that what does not get sold from that cart, gets tossed in the dumpster, where if you're willing, you can then get it for free! Let me remind you that one needs to be very careful getting in and out of the dumpster - just a word of personal experience.
Have the marketing gurus learned their cleverness from you and me? Have they watched us get all excited about coming holidays because we knew each one meant that it was a special time to be with our families, or to travel back home and see friends and family there? Have they watched as we made great plans, made reservations for traveling or shopped early for just the right clothes and other items to take with us? If they have I suspect that's all right.
My concern is that they also learned from us that when the holiday is over, its really over. So this year Thanksgiving is over on November 28th and Christmas will be over on December 26th. All the hoopla, all the decorating, all the cooking, all the visiting, all the traveling, all the new special memories, all the gift giving and receiving is over! It's time to get back to work. Kids will go back to school within a few days. And yes, Wal-Mart will have special sections set aside to accommodate all the people wanting exchanges or worse yet, returns! Nothing says "its over" like the mile long lines at the exchange and return departments of local retail stores.
Now my real concern is that the largest percentage of persons that retailers and marketing gurus have learned all of this from may well be from the Christian community. My concern is that they may not have learned this from our shopping practices, but rather from our Christian practices. Are there Christians standing in those long exchange lines? Is ti wrong to exchange things? Not at all. So where is the problem?
The problem may lie in the spirit of the Christians standing in line. The problem may lie with the attitudes of the Christians standing in line. The problem may lie there as a result of a lost Christmas spirit, a lost remembrance of what Christmas is really all about, a lost feeling of appreciation or joy or at least some form of gratitude for the gift God gave us in his Son.
A very wise person once asked me why we were singing Christmas hymns on the Sundays of Advent. I said; "Because they are Christmas hymns - duh!" Their response was a very calm, patient and polite explanation of Christian liturgical year. They reminded me that in the Season of Advent, we are to sing Advent songs. And that when Christmas Eve arrived and the Sundays following, we would then be in the Christmas season and it would then and only then be appropriate to sing Christmas hymns.
It seemed that this person's thinking was that the day of the holiday actually marked the beginning of that holiday season, and the celebrations of the season should follow the actual day of the event. Were they crazy? How can we possibly continue being thankful after Thanksgiving with Christmas so close? There's so much to do, so much to buy, so much to decorate. There's no time for any extended thoughts or actions of thankfulness!
How can we be expected to be in the Christmas spirit when Easter is so close? We need to get on with things! We'll be busy getting ready for Easter a few days after Christmas! There will be all the candy to buy, all the plastic eggs to buy, all the baskets and colored plastic grass to buy, not to mention ordering all the Easter Lilies and then, buying the new Easter clothes! No, we can't waste time on Christmas once December 26th gets here! It's almost Easter time! Don't believe me? Watch what Wal-Mart does. Get those trees down, lights put away and start looking for all the Easter junk you've got stored away!
You know as well as I do that the real issue here is even if the marketing gurus learned their practices from watching us, we have certainly allowed ourselves to be deceived into thinking that what we see them doing is right. And you know as well as I do that that's just wrong!
Yes, we need to be prepared before the holiday arrives. But we need to be getting spiritually prepared while buying the groceries and gifts which are appropriate for the special holiday.
Yes, the day of the event does actually start the season and celebration of the special holiday and it should last spiritually for a very long time. What would happen if all the "Christians" prepared spiritually for such special holidays as they do materially? We would realize during our Christian preparation that the material preparation and all the material purchasing was really overrated. We would also realize that such material preparation alone only added to distancing us spiritually from the actual meaning and Godly purpose of the holy event. We would also realize that such material preparation alone only aided in transforming a holy event into a grand marketing success!
And yes, you know as well as I do that just about this same time every year, various persons who believe they may actually have some type of influence of others, like ministers and such, try to persuade us to slow down, don't get caught in the trap of the marketing gurus and for heaven's sake, don't let the holy event just be important for a day or so and then let it be over. Such people try to remind us that we will miss so much if we fall into the deception of marketing and sales. Is it possible that they could actually be right? Which does God prefer? Our long spiritual and continued renewal at such holy times, or our long spending and exchanging or returning? Hummmm? Happy holy days!
Pastor Kip
