Two Boxes of Christmas Cards

“And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn.”  Luke 2:7 (KJV).  Those of us who embrace the Christian faith turn our attention to the birth of Jesus at Christmas, and his resurrection during the season of Easter.  I try to avoid the 40 or so other religious holidays observed by Jews and Christians that would demand spending more time in church than I would care to spend.

One Sunday morning at the Fourth Avenue Church of Christ, I had the appointment to lead a prayer a few days before Christmas.  Within the rote of standardized prayer I included, “Thank God for Santa Claus and the love and labor that makes him real.”  Several parents thanked me after their children had heard and acknowledged my admonition.  I like Santa Claus, the padded and bearded jolly commercial image posing with children for pictures and detached promises of games and toys, following judgmental inquiry of behavior, as if it mattered.  More personally, I appreciate my late friend Charley Hafner and my current friend Pat Petty who often play the role of visual verification of an important belief system.

I grew up in a Five & Ten store from the age of two.  One Christmas eve, my mother brought home an “unwrapped” dart board at the end of her work day, that was to arrive later while I slept.  I watched parents pick up layaways on Christmas Eve, and the magic and love of waking up on Christmas morning was not diminished for me. It was just one more day knowing my mother loved me, and she had a job and a paycheck, and I was blessed and grateful.

Some of my closest friends are either atheists who deny, or agnostics who doubt the biblical nativity story.  Some of my closest friends have found some satisfaction in learning there was no Santa Claus, and lost the magic and the moment of the “Christmas morning myth.”

In an earlier book, I included a chapter, “Finding Peace in the War on Christmas.”  The coalition of Fox News and Fundamentalist conservatism has led many to believe there is a “war on Christmas.”  They see this as an extension of their fear of a war on Christians.  I think this began years ago because of the commercialism by retailers who lost sight of the religious observance by moving the shopping season back to the day after Halloween and then added Black Friday to make Baby Jesus an afterthought in a culture of capitalism.

I spend a lot of my writing trying to defend Christians and Christianity.  This is a dual challenge.  I can easily argue that this is a matter of faith guaranteed in the First Amendment.  No one should embark upon a war against Christianity because some over-zealous practitioners impose their presence in the public secular culture, which is also equally protected in the First Amendment. The more difficult challenge that I have is to defend the image of Christianity against the combined superficiality of big-box sole-proprietorship pop-culture mega-churches and the intolerance of extreme fundamentalism.

The right-wing coalition has condemned the retail message of Happy Holidays as their flag of passion to re-direct shopping destinations.  The use of the phrase is not to take Jesus out of capitalism but to extend the shopping season from Thanksgiving morning through the markdown days after Christmas.  It has been my observation that those who spend their effort to keep Christ in Christmas are still driven primarily by markdowns and cheap foreign labor, rather than egalitarian public relations.

There is no war on Christmas.  There is a cultural disagreement about Christmas.  We have misconstrued the definition of separation of church and state.  We do not seem to understand the difference in the Nativity scene at the Catholic Church or at First Methodist pre-school; the images of Frosty, Rudolph, Santa, and trees and ornaments in a retail window; and the Nativity scene in the Court House and the County Administrative Complex.  We confuse individual religious freedom, free enterprise retail choices, and established state religious activity.

For many years, in my days in retail I mailed a letter just before Thanksgiving announcing my extended hours from Thanksgiving to Christmas.  The letter included gift wrapping, free alterations after Christmas, brand names, and an institutional message about the store and its history and reputation.  I did not mention Jesus or God. The town was small enough that everyone knew that any message from Pigg & Peach was from the Peach family.  Everyone knew I was a retailer and a Sunday school teacher and they respected both.  I have been blessed to live in a small town in which my customers were my friends and my mailing list grew to over five thousand.

I rarely sent Christmas cards. Occasionally, I look at Christmas cards on store shelves.  I read the Bible verses and axiomatic wisdom written inside.  Some convey Seasons Greetings or Happy Holidays with ornaments, trees, snowmen, wrapped packages, lights, children, reindeer, sleighs, and bags of toys.  Some have images of the Virgin Mary, Joseph, the baby Jesus in a manger, camels, three wise men, gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

In my internet world of blogs, emails, and facebook I will continue to be an advocate for Christianity; I will continue to campaign for retail integrity and the economic logic of capitalism; I will repeat the logic of separation of church and state; and defend the value and integrity of secular morality.  Not all of my friends are Christians, and to respect their faith or feelings in seasonal dialogue, does no injustice to my faith.

From the last box of Christmas cards I bought, I saved one for a keepsake.  The cover is a painting of a shepherd with his staff, sitting on the ground beside a lamb, looking up at one, slightly brighter, of a million stars in the Heavens, maybe in the East, maybe not.  The message inside was a simple, “Peace on Earth, good will toward men.”  I really don’t want to buy two boxes of Christmas cards.  May I just share the image of that one card and its simple message with you?

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Tags: Black Friday, War on Christmas

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