Well now, it has been a couple of weeks since the onslaught of “Black Friday” and “Cyber Monday” plunged us all into the Christmas shopping season.
I remember several years ago driving to the Columbus airport late on Thanksgiving evening. Passing the outlet mall exit on I-71, I was utterly amazed at the number of cars there. There were so many cars that the overflow was out into the streets.
People were parked on the shoulders of even the exit ramps of the interstate. On one of the ramps, the cars were backed up for a quarter of a mile on the shoulder of the actual highway. People had parked and were walking toward the mall – all in an effort to be one of the first to get that “Black Friday” bargain.
Those sales seem to drive people to do strange things, don’t they? We have all heard the stories of people going crazy just to get a few dollars off on the next “big” item.
In 1983 the Cabbage Patch Kid was the mysterious “it toy,” selling over 100 million to date. Most veterans of the great Cabbage Patch Conflict of ’83 are still confused as to what the fighting was really about.
“They don’t walk, they don’t talk, wet their pants, or grow hair,” said a reporter covering the Cabbage Patch madness. “Most buyers can’t express why this doll is so popular this year, and others can’t explain why they want to buy it.”
Then there was the infamous 1983 Cabbage Patch smack-down in Pennsylvania. It culminated in a store manager warding off crazed parents with an aluminum baseball bat.
The next huge Christmas toy was Tickle Me Elmo in 1996. People magazine reported that the Sesame Street character’s doll filled the country with a kind of barbarian “blood lust.”
In Canada, an unsuspecting Wal-Mart clerk almost met his doom when three hundred customers stampeded at the sight of the Elmo he held. The clerk suffered a broken rib, a concussion, and a final knockout blow from a white Adidas shoe.
Clearly, the raw energy fueling the search for the perfect Christmas toy is something to behold. The “it” toys of Christmas will continue to come and go — the Xbox 360 (2005), Zhu Zhu Pet (2009), Frozen dolls (2014), Hatchimals (2016), and L.O.L Surprise! (2017) — leaving both joy and havoc in their wake.
In a similar vein, a young fellow was overheard not too long ago complaining about Christmas. He disliked it with a passion. But his complaint was not concerned with the stress of the holidays or the consumerism that seems to permeate almost everything about the season.
His distaste for Christmas found its resting place in the music.
At first glance, that sounds like the attitude of a modern-day Grinch, but the young man explained why he found the music so bad.
“Christmas music is boring because there’s no narrative tension,” he said. For him, the shallow lyrics of our Christmas songs couldn’t encompass the world’s heartache. Simeon the prophet never wished anyone a “holly-jolly Christmas” or envisioned anything about chestnuts roasting on an open fire.
The same is true for one of our favorite television channels. That channel has been running Christmas movies almost non-stop since July, and the closer we get to Christmas, the more they ramp up their programming.
But, if you think about it, every movie is, for the most part, the same. Oh, the characters may be different, and the locations may change, but the storyline is basically identical with the movie that just ended two hours before: Boy meets girl. They do not like each other but are somehow forced to spend time together. They begin to like each other. Then an old girlfriend or boyfriend shows up.
Conflict ensues. One of the couple leaves town, but somehow they end up being thrust back together one last time where everything is resolved and they kiss and make up, and, for all we know, live happily ever after!
Indeed, according to them, this is a happy, sappy Christmas!
In a time when we seem to learn of a new tragedy each day, the unbearable lightness of Christmas seems absurd to the watching world. But at the heart of the Christmas story – the REAL Christmas story, not the greeting card variety — there is a strong declaration of true joy!
At the center of the Christmas story is the scene depicted in the Gospel of Luke (2:8-20) where the angels appeared to the shepherds watching their flocks in the fields outside of Bethlehem on the night when Jesus was born.
These shepherds, after hearing the message that their Savior had been born, left their flocks and rushed to see Him. They marvelled at how the angels had appeared to them – lowly, unclean outcasts, and had been given this news “of great joy”.
The Scriptures tell us that when they left Joseph and Mary and the newborn baby Jesus that night, they returned to their flocks, “glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen.”
Jesus came so that “my joy may be in you and your joy may be full.” (John 15:11).
Many years later, the Apostle John, a teenager when he was with Jesus, penned these words: “We proclaim to you what we ourselves have actually seen and heard so that you may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. We are writing these things so that you may fully share our joy” (1 John 1:3-4).
This Christmas much could be said about consumerism or loss of perspective. But the real truth of Christmas is not the holly-jolly or the happy-sappy variety.
The real joy of Christmas is found in the Savior who brought with Him blessings flowing “far as the curse is found,” of the one who came to “free us all from Satan’s power.”
Have a very, Merry Christmas!
God bless…
Chuck Tabor is a regular columnist for the Hillsboro Times-Gazette and the Wilmington News Journal. He is also the former Pastor of Faith Community Church in Hillsboro and Port William UMC.
