Christmas gets earlier every year!

I’m picking up this title from someone else - not that I entirely agree with it- but I do in large measure join into the sentiment it is expressing. We tend to rush, rush, rush to get Christmas going. Too much, we rush a season where rushing is not good for the sense of the season. Rushing Christmas may utterly warp Christmas, so much that we are not even talking about the same thing. When we say Christmas, are we talking about the Christian festival of Christmas, a holy day and a holy season celebrating the coming of our Redeemer? or are we talking about a secular holiday, which retains a vestige of the name, Christmas, while mainly signifying a time of year for exaggerated spending and consumption, and for expanded holiday hilarities?

People like me, who think and write about the times “now,” and the times “back then,” may be expected to be longing for the days of our childhood, when things were better. We sometimes call them, “The Good Old Days!” But, every so often we are reminded that even back in those old days, we didn’t necessarily always get it right when it comes to our seasonal celebrations. I recall that when I was a boy, we often heard dismayed exclamations that Santa Claus is taking over Christmas!

Christmas is getting too commercial! Put the Christ back in Christmas! Christmas, not Xmas! We need to get back to the reason for the season! These are not new sentiments, or new feelings, or new dismays. I was just reading in the newspaper an article pointing out that even back in the 1880s stores werepushing early shopping.

It seems that in every age and stage of life, there are so many distractions which get in the way of Christmas, and may even totally derail Christmas!

Do I think Christmas is derailed in our society today? Yes, I do. I give you an example. I noticed on TV during Thanksgiving week, an ad in which a weary lady is removing packages from the back of her SUV, when a younger friend approaches, and observes, “Oh you look so tired!” To which the lady answers, I got up at 3 a.m. for Black Friday (yes, I’m exhausted!). But I saved hundreds!! And you? To this the younger (wiser?) girl answers, “Oh I slept in, but I still saved thousands!” (The camera shifts to her brand, spanking new SUV in the background.) To that, the older, dumber lady reacts with an incredulous and envious, “OH!!" So, what is the Christmas season about? with its Black Fridays and its Cyber Mondays? Why, it must be about beating everyone else to the good deals which are to be had if you shop in all the right places!

Oh, it’s about effortlessly getting a really great deal while your silly neighbor is driving herself ragged shopping for silly stuff she thinks she needs, when what she really should have been shopping for was a new car! No, wait, Christmas is about who can get the best deals of all, while making other people look silly because they missed out on the deals!! No, No, wait,it must be about how much you SAVED - (while you were spending your hundreds or your thousands)!

Now, let me indulge in just a little “Now and Then” thinking about this “saving hundreds,” and “saving thousands!” According to today’s advertising world, one of the dumb things that we can do is to pay “regular price” for stu◊. You mean you paid “FULL PRICE” for that??!!

A good deal is calculated by how much you “saved” on the deal, not how much you spent! Or, a good deal is gauged according to the size of the rebate. That is, if you get 15 percent o◊, or 25 percent o◊, or 50 percent o◊, then that is a really good deal!! Just think, if you get 40 percent o◊, then that gives you lots of money left over to spend on all these other things you want!?

An old-timer like me is confused by that kind of thinking. Of course in the old days, we were already into the idea that things in the store are “priced” at a “normal” level, and that sometimes the store would put on a sale. But in many of our dealings, we were not thinking in terms of a regular price and how much we were saving with the “reduced” price. If we were trying to buy a new 10-year-old car, the sticker price was telling us want the seller wanted for it. What we were going to offer for it was quite another matter. What a car is worth was a thing for negotiation.

The car ends up being worth what the seller wants for it interacting with how much the buyer wants it and how much he is willing to pay.

Even today, our auctions maintain the idea that a thing is worth basically what theowner or seller can get for it!

I’m not so much distressed by how early we shop for Christmas. It may even be thoughtful to shop early, avoiding the crowds and all the hubbub and pressure on the salespeople! But is Christmas becoming an excuse to spend oneself into such a hole that it will take months to pay down the credit card? Is Christmas just a time for thinking of “deals” and all the stu◊we want to add to our already overstu◊ed lives? Maybe we would be doing ourselves a favor to slow down, and to prepare for Christmas from the inside of ourselves, before we are overwhelmed by all the hubbub and distractions of the season. The traditional Christian year begins with a four-week Advent Season preparing for and anticipating Christmas.

Then, Christmas begins on Dec. 25 and continues for 12 days until Jan. 6. Isn’t that a strange idea in today’s world? Why are we so in a rush to get Christmas going, and then in such a rush to get it over with?

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Editor’s note: Jerry Nichols, a native of Pea Ridge, is an award-winning columnist, a retired Methodist minister with a passion for history. He is vice president of the Pea Ridge Historical Society. He can be contacted by e-mail at [email protected], or call 621-1621.