Dec. 22: Xmas the spirit of ______

The American pastor John MacArthur gave me an earful when I climbed into my car this afternoon to take my kid swimming. My radio, as always, was tuned to the Mars Hill Network and it happened to be Grace To You time. Pastor John was saying that Christmas doesn't make any sense if we discount the reality of sin. He went on and on, as radio pastors tend to do, talking about Jesus being born a saviour who was sent to deliver us from our sins and to urge us to repent. Jesus didn't come to give us Our Best Life Now.

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Even if I am living my Best Life Now, it didn't feel that way when I was in Wal-Mart earlier, which was unbelievably busy on this particular day. I should expect as much three days before Christmas. I navigated my shopping cart among my fellow shoppers as I carried out my mission, which was to buy a roasting pan, two cans of green beans, some apples, and Melatonin. My kid tried to add a Kinderegg and a new vacuum cleaner to the cart but he succeeded only in adding the former.

Somewhere in there, I heard John Lennon and Yoko Ono et al sing their Happy Xmas song. I got in line to wait for my turn at the cash register and I was standing directly behind a young family that was buying a large screen TV. 

"Christmas present?" I asked as John Lennon sang "so this is Christmas..."

"Yeah," the man said as John Lennon sang "and what have you done?"

No one in the family looked particularly overjoyed about the pending purchase of the giant screen TV. Maybe it's because they knew they couldn't afford it. John Lennon probably could have afforded one, even though he wanted us to Imagine a world with no possessions.

Blah.

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The giant TV in the family's shopping cart was made in China, as was the roasting pan that I bought. In fact, nearly everything in that Wal-Mart was made in China. This thought depresses me. I sometimes think of China as vast city-sized spaces of massive factories where indentured citizens do nothing but manufacture junk in order to earn substandard wages. In other words, they live unhappy lives making things that will make people in the west happy for about five seconds, or until the novelty wears off.

Part of this is because of the 996 system, which dictated that workers have to work from 9 a.m. until 9 p.m., six days a week.* Recently, the BBC reported that the Chinese government says it's cracking down on this sort of tyranny, though they don't do a very good job of enforcing it.

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I tend to make fun of the Hallmark Christmas movies but I don't begrudge people for watching them. No one was particularly mean at the Wal-Mart today but everyone seemed quite joyless. Of course there was a pandemic going on, it was crappy inside, and, as I mentioned, John Lennon was singing his Happy Xmas song. Maybe it's hard to be happy when the world is going to hell and you don't believe the same things John MacArthur does. 

So Hallmark gives us an alternate reality. They show us movies that take place in postcard perfect small towns where everybody can find true love as long as they're beautiful and like to wear red sweaters. There might be kids in these Hallmark small towns but they're always well-dressed and well-behaved and you never see them rubbing their own puke into Christmas trees.

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In Grade 8, Mr. Campbell asked his class to write essays about what Christmas meant to them. I decided to be cynical and lambasted the whole thing for being a celebration of greed. I was inspired by a clip I'd seen on the previous evening's newscast, where some middle aged dude was being interviewed in a department store. He told the camera crew that he had managed to snag some Pound Puppies and a Lazer Tag set as well as the hottest game for the NES. "I'm just happy to know my kids aren't going to hate me on Christmas," he said with a smile.

I thought the guy was a wimp. Maybe he was being sarcastic but that's no message to send to the world. If this guy's kids were going to hate him for not getting them the latest fad, then they were evil spoiled brats who needed a sit down with John MacArthur. If you're getting fed and clothed and sheltered and coddled 365 days a year, trust me when I tell you that Christmas presents are gravy.

My fellow students berated me for being a Scrooge. One girl wrote simply: "Christmas is a time when we get together with our family and tell them we love them and Jesus was born too."

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I think the odds are very good that I will watch the Charlie Brown Christmas special tonight. I bet this note would read different if I wrote it after the viewing.

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* B-Man's mom thinks this system also applies to newspaper editors.