Christ, Christmas, and Credit Cards

Randy Jumper, an old friend from grad school, just post­ed a won­der­ful piece from NPR.

Excerpt:

I’m not fight­ing the com­mer­cial­iza­tion of Christ­mas; that fight was lost ages ago. What I’m after is more rad­i­cal: Dis­en­tan­gling Jesus entire­ly from this blight on his good name. I’m out to change the bumper stick­er from ‘Keep Christ in Christ­mas’ to ‘Free Christ from Christ­mas.’

Heresy? Well, com­pare Christ­mas with Mar­tin Luther King’s birth­day. On his birth­day, nobody ever pays any atten­tion to his birth. Instead, it’s ‘I have a dream’ and his impact on soci­ety. We mark Dr. King’s birth by focus­ing on what he said and did as an adult. Christ­mas, by con­trast, has no time for what the adult Jesus said and did. Christ­mas keeps him safe­ly shut up as a baby in the manger, where he can’t make his usu­al noise about peo­ple repent­ing and liv­ing a god­ly life.

…

I’m not propos­ing that we can­cel Christ­mas. I know, the econ­o­my would col­lapse with­out it. Fine. Keep the gift-giv­ing and the jin­gle bells. Let’s just sub­tract the remain­ing Jesus ele­ment from it and move that over into East­er. Call Decem­ber 25th Sol­stice. Call it Retail Day. Call it Hol­i­day Num­ber Nine. I don’t care, just leave Christ out of it. He was not born to be the patron saint of fourth-quar­ter earn­ings.