What Has Happened to Christmas?

I feel like a preacher when I give this "sermon."

 Everyone can see the huge sales at the stores, while the Salvation Army volunteer stands in the rain that just won't be snow. Back at home, the smell of cookies and pie chase you and the stench of the Christmas tree won't go away. Eggnog runs slowly over the tongue as the mud does in the back yard. The radio blares "Jingle Bell Rock" for the hundreth time, and I have now come to realize that it is the same disc used last year, and the tape is repeatedly played. I run to my room to escape the chaos.

What has happened to Christmas? What has happened to Christ's Birthday? Media, economy, and pop culture have mutated the meaning of Christmas to be the "spirit and gift of giving." Honestly, to hell with that. How dare we as a people stray this far from the true meaning? You can't seriously say to yourself as Christian believer that busying yourself is the right way to prepare yoursefl for the coming of Jesus into our world. That is unbelievable. 

And to all you aetheists and "nontheists" out there: Be creative! Yes, creative. Your obviously creative enough to blind yourselves in a belief, or lack there of, that distances you even more from the Truth. I say be creative and make your own season of giving. Leave mine alone, this is Christ's Birthday, and if you don't believe in Him, bring your false idols elsewhere.

Meister Eckhart, Domincan monk that shortly wrote after St. Thomas Aquinas about negative possesiveness. Negative possesiveness, from my understandment, is what deepens the wound, seperates the distance that we have fallen from God. Eckhart wrote that one who completely frees himself/herself from that attachment to earthly possesions becomes a figurative "virgin." The literal meaning of purity has quite a bit of meaning in this new figurative sense as well. But a virgin can become a "virgin-mother." Once one has completely freed  oneself from what binds him or her from becoming a virgin, they, in their emptiness of possesions and attachments, are filled with agope-love in Greek. That love is from God, through the "virgin-mother" and to others. Virgin-mothers are givers of  love completely, nothing else. 

And in the Christmas sense, the distance we have traveled from the true meaning of Christmas is equivalent to the original sin that witholds one from being a "virgin." But, I challenge everyone out there, to lay off the Birthday of Christ with falsehoods and empty gifts, and really try to meditate over the idea of being completely free from negative possesiveness. It is completely mind blowing, even as a nonbeliever, to think of no jealousy, greed, want over anything. And that does not go without saying that you have to be logical about what negative possesiveness is. It defintely does not mean to neglect yourself or your possesions, family, loved ones, etc. but to let go. Eckhart, fully optimistic as he was, believed that this complete seperation from that binding force to earthly possesions could be filled.

I feel that on a deeply theological level, Christmas is not being truly celebrated. That is a self-evident statement, and if you can't see what I mean in that Christmas is not being celebrated, then I don't know how you could get through what I have pecked out for the last couple of paragraphs because right now, as a race, from what I see, people hurt each other. They hurt one another in this season of "giving" because we give and receive tangible, and earthly possesions that we become bound to. Those items will in time, deteriate and be lost forever. But emptying one's of negative possesiveness will allow one to be filled with God's love, through the Birth of His Son, Jesus Christ. When we can fully accept that concept, then we will be truly celebrating Christmas. 

Author's Note

I didn't reread any of this, which I do too much. So excuse some parts that I might have mixed up. Criticize the writing more than the idea, but I feel like this is my self proclamation more than a challenge, though I still challenge people to go for what I said in the writing.
(Please don't make this an argument over if I am right or wrong about Christmas. - But feel free to poke at what I have said about what to do to fix it.)

Reviews

[A sea person]

Thank you for submitting this to my Christmas contest! While I disagree with several of your statements (of course) I can understand your feelings about this. Well-written, interesting research and theological opinion.

[Ayla Automatic]

Me likes! Your right about christmas being so fucked up. I am so not in the spirit of the season this year for just that very reason. I feel like I'm just buying things for people because they expect me to, not because they'll actually appreciate the time of year or what it means.