Once upon a time there were seasons and we honored them and enjoyed each of them in their own right. But over the last two or three decades they've been glazed over with tinsel, or too much Christmas. One of the things that makes something special is that it's unique and rare. Christmas is a special time when we decorate like crazy and we used to say, "Christmas comes but once a year." Sadly, that's no longer the case in our secular world. We have Christmas in July sales--STOP IT! Then retailers start putting out Christmas items out right after Labor Day in some cases but other times weeks before Halloween. We still have a growing popularity of Halloween decorations going up but we seem to skip Thanksgiving which is a wonderful holiday that should have the spotlight right now. Fall decorations with leaves turning color and the weather cooling should be savored and enjoyed with family and friends getting together over the biggest meal of the year--usually--and football galore! But the media and the business world is all abuzz over Christmas. It was only about 30 years ago when the day AFTER Thanksgiving, Black Friday, kicked off the Christmas season. The malls and elsewhere didn't put up Christmas decorations until then. Kids would gather at the mall or elsewhere to wake up a sleeping Santa Claus to get him started for the season. NO MORE! The decorations are already up and Christmas music has been playing for weeks.
To prove the secular world knows nothing about the real Christmas you'll hear the media tell you, "Christmas is over" on December 26th. The radio stations playing Christmas music sometimes quit playing Christmas music at noon Christmas day! Perhaps these stations should listen to the music they're playing because December 25th is the first day of Christmas which runs through January 6th. That's the twelve days of Christmas. Ask any media guru when Christmas is over and nine out of ten will probably get it wrong. The ratio is probably a lot higher but I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt even though they don't deserve it. I'm sure most of them haven't darkened the door of a church is years, if ever and the only time they go in one now is to cover a special ceremony.
Christmas is special to us Christians. It is sacred and happy time with the birth of our Savior. It should be celebrated in its own time frame...decorations should go up the day after Thanksgiving. The secular world taking advantage should open their stores no earlier than midnight on Black Friday and should remain closed Thanksgiving Day so all the employees can enjoy the day with their family and loved ones. Christmas music should start December first and run through January 6th or at least keep playing it through Christmas Day, not stopping at noon for goodness sake. But my complaint goes back awhile. One of the greatest satirists of all time is the late-great Stan Freberg. He ridiculed the secular world overdoing Christmas is his recording Green Christmas as far back as 1958. So listen and enjoy as Freberg harpoons the secular world messing up Christmas. For those of you under 40 some of the humor may be lost on you. But there was a time when we could advertise cigarettes and other tobacco products and one of the cigarette brands, L&M, used the slogan that the letters meant "less tars, more taste." (It actually was one of the Liggett & Myers brands). You'll also hear a reference to "tubeless" tires. Up until the mid to late 1950s car tires had an innertube to keep it inflated before technology figured out how to make tires more durable and the new tubeless tires were a big hit and an advertising point. No matter, enjoy a man who literally pioneered the humorous commercial and poked fun at popular television shows--Freberg was the all-time best at satire and humor.