Christmas cliches

To start off this season of Advent, here's a yuletide joke...

"What do you call Santa's little helpers?"

A: "Subordinate Clauses."

Ah, how that pleases both the Christmas lovers and the grammarians.

But since it 'tis the season, here's an article from John Rausch, a Glenmary priest from Kentucky (a Glenmarine, as he once told me). John is one of the funniest and most socially conscious people of faith I know, and I love the way this article skewers both the moron pundit urging us to put "Christ back into Christmas," but also the hyperconsumer, who will shoot someone to get a damn video game console, but will pay little attention to the crux of this season.

Take it away, John... (bold parts are my emphasis)

Christmas Giving Can Save the World
By Fr. John Rausch

Cliche #1: "Christmas is becoming too commercial."

Cliche #2: "Put Christ back in ‘Christmas’."

Non-cliche: "Christians through our hyper-consumption are destroying the world Christ came to save."

Consumer expectations about Christmas bate the trap that catches many of us. The credit card industry estimates that Americans will use plastic to charge around $100 billion for gifts at Christmastime. The average middle class family already owes about $8,000 in credit card debt, but an estimated 115 million consumers survive by paying at least the minimum monthly balance and carrying the rest with crippling-high interest rates. With more than two credit cards in circulation for each person living in America, the plastic card represents the opiate of the consumer, separating the psychological high of the purchase from the depressing low of financial consequences.

Christmas expectations have woven themselves into our social fabric and become ingrained in many of us. For example, we don’t feel guilt if we neglect to buy a gift for someone who gifts us. We feel embarrassment. Guilt means by justice we owed something and did not give it. Embarrassment means by social conventions, the other bested us. So the cashier swipes our credit card and we buy the person something to tie the score. Consumption becomes defensive, compulsive and mindless.

The goods we consume provide information, while they communicate our social status and values. A $40 shirt with "Tommy Hilfiger" printed up one arm trumpets that the wearer participates in the global economy–the one-third economy, since two-thirds of the world’s population cannot afford a $40 shirt. We consume pricy things less because we need them to survive and more because we need them to participate in our social class.

Consumerism also shifts the economic emphasis away from the common good to individuals and their freedom. The market promotes happiness, good health and education through the exercise of individual choice–providing a person has the dollar power to choose. As a result, CEOs and Members of Congress have gold-plated healthcare plans, while the blue-collar diabetic down the road has free clinics and emergency rooms.

Frivolous consumption is destroying the planet. Scientists estimate it would take more than five earths to sustain the world’s current population at American consumption levels. With only 4 percent of the world’s population, America consumes 25 percent of all resources, uses 43 percent of all gasoline and produces 25 percent of all greenhouse gases. Without a change in lifestyle, global warming will significantly alter life on this planet.

"Modern society will find no solution to the ecological problem unless it takes a serious look at its life style," wrote John Paul II in his World Day of Peace Address, January 1, 1990. In concluding his message he says, "I wish to repeat that the ecological crisis is a moral issue."

Because consumerism has an orientation of "having" rather than "being," the challenge remains to create a lifestyle valuing consumer choices that deepen the human experience and highlight healthy relationships. A non-profit group in Abingdon, VA, Appalachian Sustainable Development, suggests a few creative ideas along those lines for Christmas. For example, help a child become curious about the natural world by giving a tree the family plants together, cook or bake a gift, make a photo album filled with memories, or give some socially conscious gift from the Heifer Project or UNICEF.

The cliche about "Put Christ back in Christmas" must mean something about his gift giving, because if we gave the same way, we would probably be helping to saving the world.