Djelloul Marbrook

It rained icily the day after Christmas, so my wife and I went to our favorite cafe for comfort and cheer. How was your Christmas? we asked one of our favorite waitresses. I survived, thank God it’s over, she said. Then, upon reflection, she said, Now I have a year to get ready for another one.

Christmas isn’t supposed to be like that, is it? It’s supposed to be a time of joy. That’s why the churches play trumpet and organ voluntaries. So who made Christmas this way? Not the Grinch. Not Ebenezer Scrooge. Not drat socialism or dread terrorism. No, we made it that way. Each year we accept the invitation of commerce to celebrate the birth of a savior by buying too much and paying later.

And each year we conveniently forget what that savior did to the money lenders. We turn Christmas, the birth of Jesus Christ, the festival of lights, into the exaltation of credit, usurious credit.

Surely Christmas could be made splendid for the children, surely we could show how much we value loved ones and friends, without making it a grueling ordeal that leaves us in debt, exhausted and glum.

Christmas has become an exhortation to support the economy. But the economy isn’t supporting us. It isn’t giving us adequate jobs, good educations and proper health care. It is, in fact, mercilessly cheating us while telling us it’s our patriotic duty to like it. We’re told our well being depends on Christmas sales, not jobs but sales. We’re told, Look, whoopee, the stock market is rising. Sure it is, because payrolls are being cut. We’re told in short that Christmas is about money, our money in somebody else’s pocket.

Instead of squawking about issues like abortion and gay marriage, the wedge issues that tear the fabric of our society apart, the preachers would do well to charge us with restoring Jesus’ message to Christmas. But they seem to enjoy the power that dividing us gives them. I think Jesus would drive them from their pulpits as he drove the lenders from their stalls.

But it’s still raining raining, and it ’s cold, and our friend’s face looked heartbreakingly tired, and even cockeyed optimists may have their curmudgeonly moments.—DM