Bjcorbin's Blog

Because Christmas fell on a Sunday this year, I was afforded the rare opportunity to have the day after Christmas off.  And though I mostly spent the day cleaning up from our holiday festivities and running a few errands, I noticed a few things along the way that struck me as strangely symbolic of the current state of our culture.

The first of those observations came as I got out of bed and gazed out my window.  Just the night before, my neighbor’s house had been a glow with all sorts of blinking lights; along with lighted candy canes aside the walk-way, a robustly decorated tree in the front window and multiple inflatable’s in the yard.  Judging from the number of cars that surrounded the house just a night earlier, it would seem that there had been quite a celebration there.  But in the mid morning hours of December 26^th, the only shred of evidence that remained was the dead carcass, of the now bare tree, which lay lifelessly along the roadside.  Though I guess that I can admire my neighbor’s efficiency, it struck me as rather sad that we’d be in that great a hurry to usher in the end of the Christmas season; but that’s how things work in today’s high tech society.  We’ve been there, done that and got the colorful holiday tie to prove it.  No reason to linger, after all we’ve got BCS bowls and late night parities coming up next weekend; and heck Valentine’s Day is practically upon us.  We move on in the name of progress, but I can’t help but feel that we’ve somehow missed the point.

Later, as I was driving along, I heard the headlines about what a good shopping season that retailers had; and the radio commentator interpreted this to be a sign that people had become generally more “hopeful” for the future.  I couldn’t help but be taken aback at that notion.  Is “hope” really what running up our credit cards at Christmas represents?  I just read an article last week, where economists estimate that household debt in America has now surpassed the national debt and yet, this man suggests that there is hope in the idea of people spending money that they don’t have?  God help us if this is how we’ve come to express our hope.  In truth, the guru’s of our cultural continue to perpetuate the myth of the consumer based economy, which purports that America is going to somehow consume its way back into economic prosperity.  It is an idea that runs right along the same lines as losing weight without changing your unhealthy diet or doing any exercise; it has a certain curb appeal, but it doesn’t really work.  Indeed, I couldn’t help but notice that the stores were packed for after Christmas sales, but I also noted that the lines to return unwanted items were wrapped around the building in some cases.  Unlike the positive sounding voice coming from my car speakers, I interpreted this as a sign of our disillusionment with all the “stuff” that we thought might make the coming year more palatable.  As I watched people, I didn’t see anything that looked like optimism in their faces; and to me, it seemed that maybe they were realizing that they still hadn’t found what they were really looking for.

I know that I have a strangely non-linear way of looking at things, but somehow all of these things seemed connected to me.  It has been suggested that most people lead lives of “quiet desperation” and I would suggest that the collective volume of that particular emotion is steadily increasing here in America.  We’ve even taken to the streets this year, to protest the disparity in our collective prosperity.  Though pundits and politicians and philosophers have all promised us that our clearly eroding way of life is going to rebound any day now, there is the nagging sense that they really don’t know any more than we do.  We keep hoping that someone or something is going to come along and fix our unraveling ways of thinking, but no one has emerged.  Christmas presented a fresh opportunity to find something hopeful, but we’ve largely traded in the true message of Christmas (i.e. John 3:16) for a new iPad and a 60” flat screen TV.

But now, just one day later, our Christmas trees lay dead on the roadside and we’re taking back all that stuff that we couldn’t afford in the first place.  It’s a shame that our culture holds nothing sacred anymore, because there is no more hopeful message than the one’s the angels delivered upon Christ’s birth.  “Fear not; for behold I bring you good tidings of great joy, which will be to all people.  For unto you is born this day in the city of David, a savior, which is Christ the Lord.  And this shall be a sign unto you, you will find a baby, wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.” “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill toward men.”  It is a timeless message that was meant for a people who seemed to have little to hope for.  If ever we needed to embrace the true meaning of Christmas, this was the year.  I know at my house, it’s a message that is still resonating and one that I hope to carry into the new year.