Compiling God's Code

If you have not read part 1, you can find it here.

I sit here the night before Christmas, listening to The Little Drummer Boy, which in my opinion is the best Christmas song and is certainly my favorite. For me, it exemplifies Jesus’ true message; a poor boy with nothing physically to give, gives all that he has – his heart and soul. And this song provides the perfect segue into what I wanted to cover. Where has Christmas gone?

God has been removed from Christmas.

Sure, Christmas started from a bunch of Pagan rituals, but over time the routines morphed into a Christian holiday. When that happened, it doesn’t matter because it happened, and that conglomeration of traditions became a holiday we use to celebrate the birth of Christ, even though we don’t know his birthdate. So you might be asking yourself, if God wasn’t a part of it in the beginning, then why worry if over recent years God has been shoved out of Christmas.

We have all noticed the slow withdrawal of Christ from Christmas. Most schools now call it winter break. Most businesses call it a holiday or winter sale. People don’t say “Merry Christmas” as much. Even all the trees erected by our Governments are usually referred to as holiday trees or something along those lines.

Traditions are built upon what? They are built upon perpetual use, and as God is slowly eased out of the Christmas holiday, the new foundations are built, and traditions shape human belief and feelings. There might a time in the future where Christmas is completely replaced, and my grandchildren will only have a Winter Festival. If that happens, I hope that it is at least Festivus.

Christmas has become a marketing machine.

Again, you might be asking yourself, Wade, people have been commercializing Christmas for years, what is new about this topic. And I say, yes, Christmas had grown commercialized even when I was child. But I’m not talking about buying presents and stocking the house full of decorations and cooking mountains of food. I’m talking about the marketing blitzkrieg that bombards all of us beginning right after Halloween, and then it peaks over a four-day shopping frenzy at Thanksgiving, where people trample, hit, destroy property, sleep in tents, and even kill people to get the best deals for presents.

We leave our families during a time when we should be thankful, just so we beat the next for a better deal. That is a problem. I purchased gifts to see my children’s faces as they opened them Christmas morning. I got them gifts because I love them. I want to give all that I can afford. But I have seen people at a large retail giant, just grab everything that the carts can hold, and then when they get to the checkout line and can’t afford it all. They simply grabbed everything to make sure he or she had it before the next person.

Maybe someday, the Internet will stop all the nonsense and make the Christmas shopping experience pleasant; that’s how I shop, and I can say that it does keep the blood pressure lower. But for now, Christmas is marketed everywhere, probably even in an atheist store, if those exist. It would probably be a t-shirt that read, “I don’t believe in Christ, but I fully support MASS.”

We are no longer connected to each other directly.

This one is a biggy because I’m a tech person, and I am not good at human contact. I loathe it because it gives me a stomachache. But I am an exception that is slowly becoming the norm. True, we actually have more conversations with more people, but, I believe without the physical proximity of the parties involved, we as humans lose a bond that we need to grow close to each other. We know you wash your car on Tuesday at 6 pm, but we don’t know you. Human contact soothes and makes us better people.

There had been times when people took the time to bond at Christmas, and I think people still have family gathering and parties, but if you look around the room, people will be glued to the pale light emitted from their devices, as they snap photos and read tweets about the world happening right in front of them.

But, that doesn’t mean all hope is lost. Tomorrow, Christmas Day, I will post the final in the series.

Merry Christmas,

Wade