The Two Christmases of 2010

When I was in retail, it always amazed me how the last quarter of the calendar year seemed to hang in the minds of the store managers and owners. From October through December, they could expect to equal or exceed the preceding three quarters, essentially doubling their profits for the entire year. I'm not sure that this holds true across the industry, but if Christmas didn't happen for our store, we'd close our doors.

So, when retailers advertise for Christmas, which costs them money, it's because they can't afford not to. They loathe the busy-ness of Christmas, the long hours, and the extra work, but they do it because they need the gross profit to come back to a job in January. "It's not personal, baby Jesus; it's business."

While the consumer version of Christmas, what I'd like to call Christma$, dominates retail calendars, it shows no sign of slowing down. The battle, of course, for Christians in America is keeping Christma$ on the periphery and Christmas in the center.

I can't imagine what it's like for people who have a highly social, social life. Party after party, Christmas pageant, baking, school concerts, endless shopping online and in the malls and the big box stores, on and on it goes. What stress! What mess! What a way to ruin Christmas with Christma$. It's enough to make Scrooges of decent people.

Yet there's a  reason for this holiday. Timothy Dalrymple writes about these two versions of Christmas and Four Reasons Why Christmas Matters. He starts of with something Christians just seem to overlook: God was not compelled or forced by anything to ransom mankind from sin and eternal death; He could have let us die. Like one of my friends said when he passed this on to me, "Wow. Just wow."

If I don't write again next week, have a Merry Christmas! Worship Him!