It is now October 28th. Reading break has arrived, 3 days 'til Halloween--I mean Reformation Day--and apparently the beginning of the "Holidays". I saw my first "Christmas" commercial yesterday on TV, an ad from Hershey with Kisses like little bells playing "We Wish You a Merry Christmas". Despite having the word Christmas in the title of the song performed, the message of the commercial mentioned only wishes for a "happy holiday season" or some such empty phrase. At one time I might have been offended by the lack of Christian content, by the purposeful evasion of dirty words like Christ. But now I'm a little glad, since the Christmas of the PR world, perhaps of the Western world, has replaced God's Gift with cheap products and God's Son with consumption. Sadly, the Christian communities cannot remain immune from this pressure: although they still maintain recognition of Christ as the center of Christmas, Christians focus more attention on shopping than El Shaddai. Nor is this distraction from Christ only evident at Christmas time. Easter is about chocolate eggs and dinnertime, Thanksgiving about turkey and football, etc.
Time for some good ol' redeeming of culture, methinks.