To celebrate the nativity story with a consumerist
orgy is to misunderstand a myth that venerates the
outcast and dispossessed

Karen Armstrong
Thursday December 22, 2005
The Guardian

Jesus -- the self-giving God who had no place to lay his own head, who advised his followers to give away all they had to the poor, who was not even afforded common comforts at his birth -- has now become the “Reason for the Season” of indulgence, glitter, consumerism. Been thinking about that today. If indeed Jesus is the “Reason for the Season,” wouldn’t we observe the season better by serving the poor, reaching out to the marginalized and dispossessed?

A lot of these “Reason for the Season” type of Christians have been going around claiming that secularists are trying to take Christ out of Christmas. As if such a thing were even possible… But, what I want to know is why no one is decrying the absence of the mass in Christmas? Will James Dobson, one of the chief advocates of keeping Christ in Christmas, be at mass on Christmas day? Been wondering about that today. Wonder whether or not Jesus would even want to be in Christmas. I imagine He is rather appalled by it all.

And, whatever happened to WWJD? That was promulgated by the same crowd. I think they spent a little too much time wondering what Jesus would do and not quite enough time contemplating what He’s already done. What Jesus did is he let the wise and learned -- The Wise Men -- figure out when and where He would be born. As a result, they showed up two years after the fact and brought the very kinds of gifts Jesus would later say He was not interested in. But to the shepherds, often shunned by their own people because of their inability to observe the purity code, he sent angels. That’s what Jesus did, and that’s what He would do again. I’d bet on it.

Keeping Christ in Christmas,
Jesus is the Reason for the Season,
WWJD,

It’s all just talk isn’t it?