It’s the Holiday Season again. Until recently I’ve had very warm and fuzzy feelings toward Christmas, including all the usual associations of friends and family gathered, good food, gifts, and music. As a very earnest, religious child, I truly believed in a Spirit of Christmas that could surround the world once a year. I didn’t know anything about non-Christians then, but even when I learned of them, I just knew in my heart that Christmas was a time when you showed generosity and magnanimity toward everyone, and they too would feel cheer joy. I truly believed in the greeting of the angels to the shepherds in the fields, “Peace on Earth, good will to all.” The story of a humble child born in a manger that would save all of humanity for sin, remains compelling even today, but Christmas has definitely lost it’s luster.
In fact, I have come to dread the season. Christmas music invades the malls, radio and television as early as October, so that long before December 25 that it by the time the holiday actually rolls around the music I’ve loved since I was a child starts to seem like the music military units incessantly blast into surrounded compounds in order to get those inside to surrender. The bombardment of advertising that starts even earlier makes me tense about the financial pinch so many of us are in this year. And then there’s the traffic and crowds to content with. I could go on, but you get my point. It’s stressful.
There seems to be so little joy and merriment left in the season. In fact there’s an ugliness to it, stoked by rantings about an imagined “War on Christmas” and a siege mentality many people seem to genuinely feel, though I can’t discern any any credible cause. I’ve already gotten my first Facebook message denouncing the White House for not having a Christmas Tree because they are accused of calling it a “Holiday Tree.” My heart sank when I saw the message. Are we really starting this again? Don’t we have enough to deal with as a country that we don’t need to pile this issue on?
First off, let’s be clear about the veracity of the rumor. It’s essentially the same email/Facebook status message that circulated last year and the year before, just with the dates changed. It is FALSE! NOT TRUE! It was false in 09. It was false in 2010, and its false now. President and First Lady Obama had two little girls and will celebrate Christmas in ways that are pretty much like every other Christian, American family, except with a lot of extra security and much less privacy. Check out the pictures from last year. They are almost too perfect, just like White House Christmas photos generally have been, ought to be, and probably how you want your family photos to be.
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