Fridays are for Newspaper Articles

Here’s my weekly article in the Canyon Lake (TX) Times-Guardian.  Enjoy (or disagree, no problem!):

  “A Truce between Thanksgiving and Christmas” 

            For quite some time, I have been upset at the encroachment of the retailers and media in regard to engulfing Thanksgiving in favor of Christmas.  Yes, I know that most retailers have to make the vast majority of their sales in the latter weeks of the year or they will go broke.  And, yes, I understand that the field of advertising does what the retailers pay them to do.  But, that doesn’t make it any easier to try to “carve out” (excuse the pun!) a decent Thanksgiving when almost everything you see from Halloween on has to do with Christmas.

            Clearly, my frustration is going to accomplish no more than spitting into the wind in terms of trying to get Thanksgiving its just due.  Still, I do not want to cave in to the secularization of our society either, even though it is coming at us like a tidal wave.  But, is there another option?

            Maybe not, realistically.  However, in the interest of getting a spiritual creative alternative in front of at least a few of you readers, I am going to lay out what I view as a “best of both worlds” alternative.  See what you think.

            Allow me to provide a little historical perspective on things.  When I was young—admittedly now well over 40 years ago—there was a very clear line of demarcation between Thanksgiving and Christmas.  Thanksgiving got to do its thing—often with clear memories of what the Pilgrims had done in thanking God for their survival—and people did not really start thinking much about Christmas, which was still largely viewed as remembering the birth of Jesus Cjrist, until at least the first part of December.

            Now, of course, the day after Thanksgiving is the busiest shopping day of the year and boasts the first of many Christmas parades.  In that light, our secularized version of Thanksgiving (often called “Turkey Day”) has become nothing more than a lead-in smaller holiday which gets people started in being “in the mood” to empty their wallets and fill their stomachs again a few weeks later in regard to X-mas (the secular version of Christmas).

            So, what can be done?  I can get on board with wrapping the two previous holidays up in one big package, but only under one crucial condition: throughout the entire five week or so period, we all must agree to be thankful to the Lord for the Advent of the Lord Jesus Christ (by His birth as the unique God-Man) into our world.

            As I see it, that effectively combines the true ideas behind Thanksgiving and Christmas.  It also keeps the secular from completely devouring the sacred.

            But, you might say, what about all the secular types who object to having a renewed focus on the spiritual side of Thanksgiving and Christmas?  Well, they are the folks who are always whining about the separation of church and state.  Yet, in the cases I’m talking about in this article, they were the ones who refused to allow the original cultural celebration of the two wonderful “holy days” (the origin of the term “holiday”) set aside to: 1) be thankful to God for our many blessings from him; and 2) remember the moment that literally changed history, the birth of Christ (i.e., the line of demarcation between B.C. and A.D. history).  I think it’s only fair for them to meet Christians in the middle and compromise for a change.

Coming Monday: Serious Thinking about an SBC Reform Agenda (III): “The Type of Candidates and Appointees Elected”