How do you like this time of the year? Shopping center parking lots clogged with car headlights like a starry night sky in the country. Mindless, but welcoming music drifting over hordes of harried, hopeful, hesitantly happy holiday hunters. Shop ’til you’re top-heavy, arms full of packages, box-crammed plastic bags dangling from every finger.
Sure, it’s an ordeal. Sure, I procrastinate every year. Even worse am I procrastinating this year than ever before. Too much to do—so little time. Sure, I spend in December, then spend January through October paying off the credit cards. (Sure, I talk to myself like a pit bull puppy at obedience school: Bad boy, bad United Methodist minister--shame on you!) But I don’t care. No joke! I don’t care!
While I may have railed against the materialism and commercialism of Christmas in past sermons and maybe it might help your conscience if I were to do so today—instead I want to see the lighter side of this time of the year. After all we keep engaging in its customs every year. I don’t think any of us are really ready to give up the traditions of this holiday season. So why not think about what we love about this time of the year?
City sidewalk, busy sidewalks
Dressed in holiday style.
In the air there’s
A feeling of Christmas.
Children laughing, people passing,
Meeting smile after smile,
And on every street corner you’ll hear:
Silver bells, silver bells,
It’s Christmas time in the city.
Ring-a-ling, hear them ring,
Soon it will be Christmas day.
I love many of the annual playful, over-rated, superficial, commercialized hollow holiday rituals like Jesus must have loved little children and the first sunshine on Easter morning. For three reasons. Three reasons why I love the commercialism of Christmas.
1) Christmas gives us an excuse to move closer to one another. Man shall not life by bread alone; good relationships are of utmost importance and this season reminds us of this.
A few years ago, Winona Ryder was sentenced to community service and a fine for shoplifting. Her problems didn’t start there. Listen to what she says about her early life and the need for healthier relationships:
"When I was 18, I was driving around at two in the morning, completely crying and alone and scared. I drove by this magazine stand that had this Rolling Stone that I was on the cover of, and it said, ’Winona Ryder: The Luckiest Girl in the World.’ And there I was feeling more alone than I ever had."
Christmas crowds us, badgers us, makes us open our sacks and hand tokens of love to people we spend too much time avoiding. Christmas makes us vulnerable, duty-bound to honor the possible...we could possibly be friends...we could possibly work together without in-fighting or envy...we could possibly get along, maybe even like each other.
Oh, of course, our cynical patterns of mistaken thought patterns try to tell us it won’t happen. But for one brief shining moment, we allow ourselves to pretend it is all so...possible.
That’s the first reason why I love the commercialism of Christmas—it gives us an excuse to move closer to one another. The next reason:
2) Christmas changes most people’s internal thermometer to "warm-up" setting.
Some people say they see auras. You know what an aura is?
Well there’s some people who believe that each person has an aura of various colors that surrounds the person, if you are trained to see auras. Now the aura is supposedly composed of soul vibrations and reflects the moods or thoughts of the person it surrounds. Each color of the aura is supposed to have a precise meaning which would indicate a precise emotional state.
Here’s some examples of what the aura colors are supposed to mean:
Red - Dark red may symbolize one who has a quick temper and is nervous or impulsive. All red relates to nervous tendencies.
Orange - warmth, maternal feelings, thoughtfulness, a very emotional person & creativity..
Yellow - mental activity, wisdom, personality power, happiness, good cheer, optimism.
Green - sympathy, empathy, spirituality, love, affinity with nature, a natural healer, and calm.
Blue - quiet, highly spiritual, religious, natural teacher, healer and calm. Any shade of blue in the aura is good to have.
So maybe having a blue Christmas is not such a bad thing.
Well if there’s anything to this aura stuff my aura would be several different colors. Maybe the color would change depending on the day of the week or the time of a day. I don’t know what that means. Maybe my soul vibrations energy have a chameleon setting. Whatever.
Christmas, however, transforms the psychological world of humanity like a wave of many colors, sweeping across the mindscape to warm the human psyche. Sure, it stresses people and drives some into the cold of despair...but the warm, soothing default for the season still plays in the background from every station in the inter-locking network of endless Christmas music:
Do you hear what I hear?
Joy to the world!
Chestnuts roasting over an open fire….
Have yourself a Merry Little Christmas!
I’ll Be Home...if only in my dreams...
I love the commercialism of Christmas because it warms me up on the inside. It warms most of you up too. And finally:
3) Christmas gives us a reason to hope.
All right--maybe the angels decorating the mall were made in a Shanghai sweat shop and most of the gifts won’t survive to Valentine’s Day, so what? Do you remember that old adage, "It’s the thought that counts..."?
I talked a few weeks ago about reframing your thoughts.
So "It’s the THINKING that counts!"
"Fighting the crowds" can be read as "mingling with the holiday throngs,"
Those "harried chores" and "endless items to cross off lists," can just as easily be read as "joyful preparations" and "lots of fun stuff to do."
Even if it sounds idealistic--or maybe because of it--Christmas gives humanity an opportunity to pause and believe, if only for a little while, that "peace on earth and goodwill" are actually possible. For one brief shining moment, heaven touches earth. Despite the war in Iraq and some of the other tragic events that we have heard in the news lately, this Advent season we look forward to a new earth and a new heaven, the time Jesus will come again and bring peace on earth, goodwill to all men, as the angels sang during his first advent.
Our scripture for today portrays such a hope, yet assumes such a dire situation as we might perceive in parts of our world today. Notice the contrasts.
The barren wilderness would rejoice in springtime bloom.
The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad, the desert shall rejoice and blossom; like the crocus it shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice with joy and singing.
The beauty of natural wonders would be given to the most desolate of surroundings.
For waters shall break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert; the burning sand shall become a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water; the haunt of jackals shall become a swamp, the grass shall become reeds and rushes.
God would reveal himself in lowest places. And these areas would respond in worship. [35:1-2]
Like the wilderness, the poor and weak would feel the saving touch of God. Those beaten down would be strengthened with a new courage. The ill would be healed. The blind would see. [35:3-6a]
Both the place and the people seem to be in ruin. Yet God would return their glory. The concluding words of Isaiah 35 read
And the ransomed of the LORD shall return, and come to Zion with singing; everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.
So on this 2nd Sunday of Advent, I say “Bless the Sacred Malls: May their tribe increase!”
So, if you haven’t been to a crowded shopping space yet this year--or if you’ve been putting off the last minute gifts and are now wondering how late Wal-Mart stays open Christmas Eve, or if you just want to go window-gazing again--let me suggest a radical departure: Bless the mall! See the shopping centers as holy ground.
Go to the crowded places and say a silent prayer, that all these people may have someone to give and receive love, that the spirit of success and triumph may spread across the human species, that the true gift of Christmas may be born in everyone’s heart.
Now if in this sermon today I have been unable to raise your level of joy and gladness, go today buy a nice gift and send it to yourself!
And I hope that you will find, as one Christmas song sings: it’s the most wonderful time of the year.
And may your sorrow and sighing fly away.
God bless you and merry Christmas!
