The holiday season in America can be a killer. It’s not enough that the commercial side of Christmas kicks in about Labor Day, but now with the onset of cyberspace we have moved from “Black Friday” to “Cyber Monday.” I wonder what would happen next year if the internet collapsed for, say, 48 hours starting midnight Monday of that holiday weekend.

There are, to be sure, other Grinch-like sentiments I’ve developed in this season of the year. The greatest pain is seeing a birth date set aside by the church to remember our Savior’s incarnation turned into a free market deluge; complete with stores opening at midnight, Thanksgiving eve. It would be too simple to say that it’s only greed that’s driving this phenomenon, but whatever is in first place, greed has to be a close second.

My musically focused son has complained of hearing Christmas music before Thanksgiving. To which I would add a hearty “Amen.” But the gut “wrencher” that tops all is when I read cultural commentary that it’s too bad that so many want to make Christmas a “religious thing!”

Now my Savior doesn’t need me to defend Him and I certainly believe that He’s not wringing His hands over the world’s consumption of commercialization at Christmas. In fact, my theological concerns not-with-standing, our pandering for pennies isn’t even worth a mild case of spiritual indigestion in light of eternity. It does however help my digestive system significantly to get these things off my chest!

What is a shame, though, is that the evangelical church may be just as guilty of gross exaggeration as commerce is. Pause for a moment (if that’s not asking too much) and just think of the multitudinous items you have stacked on your calendar to do between Thanksgiving and New Year’s. And probably fully three-fourths of them are either directly or indirectly related to the church in some way.

I wonder if Mary had the slightest idea what would be happening around her son’s birthday 2,000 years later when she “treasure all these things, pondering them in her heart”?

Pastor Megilligan