“Christmas time is here/Happiness and cheer/Fun for all, the children call/Their favourite time of year.” So begins the beloved classic A Charlie Brown Christmas. This 1965 cartoon, in which Charlie Brown tries to find the true meaning of Christmas, bears watching by the current generation, despite the near 50-year gap.
Charlie Brown’s depression and aggravation is exactly what one would expect from our over-commercialization and secularization of Christmas. The Christmas shopping season now starts in October, with Santa Claus taking up space on the shelves next to witches and werewolves. Santa, himself, now arrives in shopping malls in November, for whom parents stand in line for hours to give their children a chance to voice their lists of demands.
Hundreds of thousands of dollars are spent in order to purchase the newest amusement, only for it to quickly be forgotten. The commercial spirit has infected this holiday to the point that fights regularly break out over final items in stores.
The word “Christmas” itself is too often substituted. I’m not alone in being told at work that “Merry Christmas” must be replaced with the generalized, inoffensive “Happy Holidays.” This seems harmless on the surface, but we are, in fact, eliminating the very reason for the season.
Christmas used to be about hope for more to existence than a world full of problems.
We can recover the joy of Christmas only by going back to its roots. As Linus so poignantly tells us, the holiday’s true meaning cannot be found in material goods. The true joy of Christmas is in the gift of a baby, born in a manger in a cave in a tiny little town. It is the celebration of Jesus. It was not the giant event that it is today, with lights, fireworks, and parades; there was simply the cries of a newborn baby.
No matter if you believe Jesus was truely Christ, the first Christmas was about hope, something our world still needs. It was about hope that there is more to existence than a world full of problems. Hope that despite all the evil in the world, good will one day triumph. Hope for redemption, justice, and true happiness.
Instead of making a list of demands this Christmas, let’s focus on giving. It is the joy of giving, not the joy of accumulating stuff that will provide a momentary boost of happiness. I cannot remember who got me what for Christmas last year, or even what I got them, but I do remember how happy people were receiving gifts, just as the early Christians were surely filled with joy remembering the gift of their saviour.
So, focus not on material goods, nor candy, nor fancy light displays, but rather on the idea behind the simple gift given two millennia ago. And have a Merry Christmas.
