GN Commentary: December 7, 2009 - Christmas: Why Are We Doing This?

Have you ever stopped and found yourself asking why? Why are we doing this? Why are we spending all this money, even burdening ourselves with debt carrying over into the new year? Is Christmas even worth celebrating?

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Video Transcript

"Black Friday." "Cyber Monday." What strange terms have come to be associated with the start of the Christmas season! The day after Thanksgiving, "Black Friday," is so named as the day many retailers hope to break even for the year, and start making a profit by using the Christmas shopping season to move out of the red and into the black. Last Friday, some 195 million people visited stores and online shopping sites on "Black Friday," up from 172 million in 2008. Shoppers on average spent more than $340, down from the $372 they parted with last year.

"Cyber Monday," on the other hand, marks the supposed start of the online buying season. This year online retailers rang up over $900 million in web-based sales in the United States, a record figure.

But even with total Christmas spending down this year, the season still accounts for a lot of money – some $417 per shopper this year, at a time when many consumers are saddled with thousands of dollars in credit card debt.  

But in this crazy, year-end spending frenzy, have you ever stopped and found yourself asking why? Why are we doing this? Why are we spending all this money, even burdening ourselves with debt carrying over into the new year?

Is Christmas even worth celebrating? Believe it or not, early immigrants to the New World once banned the celebration of Christmas. Massachusetts Puritans in the seventeenth century prohibited the celebration of this year-end festival. In England, Christmas was forbidden by an Act of Parliament in 1647. Why? They identified it as a time of waste, greed and self-indulgence that dishonored Christ. Another reason was that the Savior wasn't even born in late December, a fact clearly understood in secular and religious sources.

The New Testament makes that fact clear. We're told that a census took place just before the birth of Jesus. Hard to do in the coldest, darkest days of the year. We also read that shepherds were keeping their flocks out in the fields by night when the Savior was born, something they would not have done in the dead of winter (Luke 2:1-5, 8).

So you see the Savior really wasn't born in winter at all. Frankly, Christmas is more commercial than religious, just as it was in the seventeenth century. So the big question is: why be part of it? And are we really doing the right thing when we drop all that cash, to pay for a festival not even mentioned in the Bible? Now's a great time to reconsider.

For GN Magazine, I'm Ralph Levy.