Christmas; it’s the best time of the year. Houses are decked with hanging lights, trees dressed in ornaments fill the living rooms of houses, festive cookies are baked, and holiday music rules the radio stations. The grand culmination of all these holiday festivities comes on the morning of the 25th of December in the form of a sickening amount of spent money, disguised as fancily wrapped presents.
The symbol of Christmas has become a vision of a mountain of shiny, wrapped boxes beneath the tree, filled with expensive gifts. What we are forgetting is the true reason for Christmas-- the birth of Jesus.
Without this vital event in the Christian religion, there would be no Christmas, no hanging lights, no month long celebration, and no giving of presents. It’s true that our society has become extremely secular; however, the root of this change in the foundation of the celebration of Christmas is due to more than just secularity.
It has long been society’s agenda to make Christmas and Christianity in general less prominent, and to instead give the spotlight to minority religions with events in the same season. This attempt to brush Jesus and Christianity under the rug during one of its most important times of the year, in order to not hurt the feelings of other religions, has had the sad effect of taking the religious aspect out of the holiday.
Christmas has been transformed into a holiday of consumerism and worldly possessions; the opposite of what it was originally created to honor. We are meant to celebrate the birth of Jesus, and to take time to be thankful for all the blessings in our lives he made possible. While everyone loves presents, and it is a kind gesture to let others know you care by buying them gifts, this obsession with presents has caused the much deeper meaning of the holiday to be overlooked.
Maybe if we were taught to focus on the basic religious foundation of the holiday rather than negate it by doing things like carefully saying “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas”, we would not so easily forget the real reason we are celebrating. We shouldn’t be ashamed to clearly establish we are celebrating Christmas in honor of Jesus’ birth which is an event that is both essential and beloved by Christians.
Making an effort to include other religious holidays in the spotlight of the season is considerate, but that does not mean we need to compromise what makes Christmas so special in the process. So this Christmas season, take a step back from the craze of consumerism and remember the true reason for the holiday.
