Ready or not, Here He Comes!
Hoppin’ and a-Boppin’ right down Santa Claus Lane.
I remember way back when the Sears catalog was the biggest thing in the world. I had no idea where this magical book came from. But, when it arrived I grabbed it and ran! That’s because in the middle of that blessed catalog were page after page of glorious toys!
Everything that a kid could possibly desire could be found in those pages.
I would go to the kitchen to ‘that’ drawer by the phone where the pencils lived and find one with a nice, sharp point.
Then, in my little corner of the world, I would circle all of the full-color pictures of the toys that I would ask that jolly, old Elf to bring me.
I had no idea that my mom would take that catalog later and see what I had circled so that she could make her shopping list.
All I knew was that the stuff that I circled, those things that I then asked every Santa’s Helper in every store we went to, somehow magically appeared under our Christmas tree on Christmas morning.
Hallelujah!
Those were the days! Right?
Simple faith in what appeared in a book.
It wasn’t until I was maybe 7 or 8 years old that I heard that Christmas was really all about celebrating the birthday of someone named Jesus.
And, even when I did hear about that, I really had no clue who this Jesus fella was or why we would celebrate his birthday.
My parents, like many other folks in the late 50s and through the 60s, wanted to live up to a standard of life that told everyone, “Look at us! We made it!”
So, they made sure that we had the requisite Stuff that affluent middle-class folks had. Stuff from the Sears catalog, for instance.
The reason I’m bringing this up today is because I think that my parents, and all those other parent from that era, taught their children well.
We do like us some ‘stuff.’
We enjoy the comfort that our status provides.
There’s something ‘nice’ about having kept up with the Jones’s all of these years.
But, it’s really kinda sad.
Every day I hear on the news, usually as the lead story, how Americans spent more than 7 billion dollars on stuff on Black Friday.
So-called experts expect today’s Cyber Monday sales to set all kinds of records.
People are spending freely in order to snag their SWAG.
Yeah. Top story.
Biggest EVER!
While somewhere later in the show, or below the fold in the newspaper, the story of the teenager who was shot and killed over the weekend is reported.
Near the end we get to find out that dozens died in this or that conflict somewhere in the world.
Poverty and disease don’t even make the final edits.
The fact that millions will go hungry this season doesn’t register.
Oh, but, the last story will be that ‘feel good’ one about a church feeding 1,200 people on the holiday.
We need a feel good story, don’t we?
Because all of the time and money we spend engorging ourselves on stuff that we neither really want nor need makes us feel a bit guilty.
Well, maybe for a minute or two.
Yeah. We caught up to the Jones’s. And, the Smith’s and Clark’s.
But, at what cost?
Our soul?