A Day Late and A Dollar Short?

First published Friday, Dec. 26, 2008 in The Daily Sentinel


The stockings, once empty, then filled, are now empty again. The tree, almost hidden by presents just yesterday, now sits forlornly in the corner with nothing hiding under its branches. The trashcans are overflowing with discarded wrapping paper, crushed bows, and over-protective, theft-deterrent packaging.

Christmas seems so slow to get here – then so quickly left behind. A few hours (minutes??) of excitement seems anticlimactic following weeks and weeks (or months and months) of build-up. Is this how Christmas is supposed to feel?

I’ve tried to do Christmas differently this year. I worked hard not to get caught up in the materialism of the season and focus more on the spiritual aspects of Jesus’ birth. Then last Saturday in the Toledo Blade, I read a columnist who sneered at my approach:

“Christmas in America,” wrote Leonard Peikoff, “is an exuberant display of human ingenuity, capitalistic productivity, and the enjoyment of life. Yet all of these are castigated as ‘materialistic’; the real meaning of the holiday, we are told, is assorted Nativity tales and altruistic injunctions (e.g. love thy neighbor) that no one takes seriously. America’s tragedy is that its intellectual leaders have typically tried to replace happiness with guilt by insisting that the spiritual meaning of Christmas is religion and self-sacrifice for Tiny Tim or his equivalent. But the spiritual must start with recognizing reality. Life requires reason, selfishness, capitalism; that is what Christmas should celebrate – and really, underneath all the pretense, that is what it does celebrate. It is time to take Christ out of Christmas, and turn the holiday into a guiltlessly egoistic, pro-reason, this-worldly, commercial celebration.”

I’ve seen what following Mr. Peikoff’s philosophy gets us – and to me, the results are simply ugly. A person says this as he’s opening the gift: “I sure hope this is better than what you got me last year!” An entire movie based on the premise of desperation and rudeness being acceptable in order to get that “must have” toy. (Remember the Arnold Schwarzenegger fiasco called “Jingle All the Way”?)

The pursuit of happiness through acquisition is ultimately a dead end. Rather than dismiss the altruistic ideal of love thy neighbor simply because “no one takes [it] seriously,” why not try living into that ideal? I will admit that most Christians do a poor job of following this instruction by Jesus, but that doesn’t make the instruction itself false or unreasonable. Rather, this shows how deeply entrenched self-centeredness is in each one of us.

Unchecked selfishness, disguised as true capitalism, results in the same kind of post-binge regretfulness as drinking too much alcohol at the party. Wake up the next day with an extreme hangover. And unfortunately, that’s what too many Americans are probably experiencing on this day-after-Christmas. They are a day late in discovering the true meaning of Christmas; and when the credit card bills arrive next week, they discover they are a dollar short (or more) of being able to pay for it all. Is this the “reasonable” celebration called for my Mr. Peikoff?

Our economy is in trouble because of the reasonable selfishness followed by too many for too long. And our federal government is sending America into unchartered territory with the quasi-nationalization of the finance industry and automotive industry. Next on the agenda: the healthcare industry. What does all of this mean? I don’t know. What I do know is this: when I focus less on self and more on others, when I take the challenge of loving my neighbor seriously, I experience greater joy and personal satisfaction – with no “day after” regrets.

Perhaps that’s the reasonableness behind Jesus’ words: “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it. What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul? For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father's glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what he has done” (Matt 16:24-27 NIV).