Every year we hear the complaints about the commercialization of Christmas and the overemphasis on the material side. I read that merchants this year were upset because the warmer than normal weather held down sales of expensive cashmere scarves. Blame it on global warming!

Newsweek's religion editor Kenneth Woodward writes a reasoned piece in the Wall Street Journal  (sub req) about the usual dust up over the public display of Christmas symbols. After recounting the dispute in his neighborhood he does offer interesting thoughts for a solution. While he does not forego Christmas he acknowledges its origins. It illustrates the truth that something God never intended to be holy cannot be made holy. Read the last part of his article below (emphasis mine) and then check out my colleague Scott Ashley's article The Top Ten Reasons I Don't Celebrate Christmas.
 

So what's in a symbol? Christian cultures got along without a Christmas tree for 16 centuries, and without a crèche for 14 of those centuries. But there is a difference: The Christmas tree is pagan in origin and ambiguous in its symbolism while the crèche is a nativity scene and scripturally based. And while I think an open society is better served by allowing explicitly religious symbols on public property on festive occasions like Christmas -- the more, the merrier, we might say this time of year -- the routine use of Christmas trees in retail stores alone tells us that they no longer symbolize anything other than a season. A Yule tree is not a Christmas tree.

I suggest a solution. If inclusion is to be this society's default value, let the tree be what it has become, the seasonal -- and secular -- symbol of choice for public property. Let Christians put up nativity scenes on church grounds and Jews erect menorahs on temple lawns. And let Muslims, if they so wish, salute Christmas with displays of their own devising outside mosques.

The virtue of this arrangement is not merely a truce in the Christmas culture wars. It would signal the recognition that the tree as symbol, though associated for a time with Christianity, has -- like the celebration of Christmas itself -- reverted to its pagan meaning. Christmas is now a winter carnival of conspicuous spending and consumption, of giving, yes, but mainly of receiving. As such, it is open to Jews and other non-Christians to enjoy with an unencumbered conscience. No one should any longer worry about wishing others "Merry Christmas," or about heading south for a week.

Christians, in particular, should welcome such a change. Historically, Christians have always been ambivalent about Christmas as a public celebration. The New England Puritans opposed it, as they did most celebrations. And in the 19th century, upper-class New Yorkers brought Christmas and its trees indoors -- away from public drunkenness and into the womb of the Victorian family whose sentimental values Christmas came to represent. Read Dickens.

Serious Christians know that the story of Christ's humble birth, as symbolized by the crèche, is a miniature gospel prefiguring his later life and death. They know, too, that the crèche cannot compete with the commercially driven largesse of presents under the Christmas tree. My argument is: Why fight it? Perhaps it is time, if only for their children's sake, that Christians surrendered the end of December to the marketplace that has made it what it has become, and established another day to celebrate the gift that the birth of Christ represents.

Better yet, look closely at the Biblical holy days God instructs us to observe to gain a fuller understanding of His mind, His purpose and His plan of salvation. We don't need to invent another religious celebration. Check out this booklet for more details.