Well, it’s that time of the year again: time for authors to write the obligatory essay, “Let’s Recover the True Meaning of Christmas.” These essays share at least three things in common: (1) they allow the authors to meet a deadline; (2) they generate letters of appreciation; (2) nobody actually changes his behavior because of them.

Every author knows that the most famous Christmas essay is the “Yes, Virginia, there really is a Santa Claus” essay. But nobody remembers exactly what it said — something about the spirit of giving, probably — nobody remembers who wrote it, but everyone remembers Virginia.

The great thing about the West is that everyone is entitled to have an opinion about the true meaning of Christmas, even people who don’t believe in Christ or Christmas. Jews don’t believe that Jesus was the Christ, and they substitute Hanukkah for Christmas, but a Jew wrote “White Christmas,” the biggest selling song in history, and the founder of the Marx toy company surely did his share of rejoicing every Christmas. Everyone gets invited. Most people show up, one way or the other. And they have a good time.

So, what is the true meaning of Christmas? And have we lost it?

LET’S PARTY!

The Jews had the right idea of celebrating from the beginning. Moses saw to that.

And thou shalt eat before the LORD thy God, in the place which he shall choose to place his name there, the tithe of thy corn, of thy wine, and of thine oil, and the firstlings of thy herds and of thy flocks; that thou mayest learn to fear the LORD thy God always. And if the way be too long for thee, so that thou art not able to carry it; or if the place be too far from thee, which the LORD thy God shall choose to set his name there, when the LORD thy God hath blessed thee: Then shalt thou turn it into money, and bind up the money in thine hand, and shalt go unto the place which the LORD thy God shall choose: And thou shalt bestow that money for whatsoever thy soul lusteth after, for oxen, or for sheep, or for wine, or for strong drink, or for whatsoever thy soul desireth: and thou shalt eat there before the LORD thy God, and thou shalt rejoice, thou, and thine household, And the Levite that is within thy gates; thou shalt not forsake him; for he hath no part nor inheritance with thee (Deuteronomy 14:23—27).

This passage, more than any other in the Bible, is a consternation for Christian fundamentalists. The phrase, “strong drink,” does not refer to Coca-Cola Classic. It refers to hootch — demon rum, if you will. God commanded the Israelites to aside at least ten percent of their wealth every year to attend three celebrations, and these celebrations involved the joyful consumption of booze. Fundamentalist Bible commentators handle this passage in the time-honored way: they skip over it.

The God of the Bible wants His people to celebrate together. And when it comes to festive celebrations, God spikes the punch.

The three celebrations — Passover, firstfruits, and tabernacles (“booths”) — were expensive. The cost of travel was high. The forfeited cost of time not spent working was high. Food and drink were far greater luxuries in the ancient world — or before 1900, for that matter — than they are today. The tithe of celebration was allocated just for the parties, not the travel expenses, let alone the forfeited income expenses. Yet God required that His people spend this money. Why?

For national participation: the sense of belonging. For a national testimony: “There’s more where that come when you worship God.” For national physical fitness: just about everyone walked to Jerusalem. For showing mercy: “And the Levite that is within thy gates; thou shalt not forsake him; for he hath no part nor inheritance with thee.”

That’s the meaning of every holiday, or as it was originally known, holy day. That’s what “Happy Holidays” was originally all about. It’s about holy wastefulness.

The Israelites were told by God to set aside tithe money to pay for these communal festivities. This was designed to make them savers. They had to learn to budget their money and their non-monetary output. This was a beneficial discipline, both morally and economically. They were to tithe to God by way of the Levites (Numbers 18), but they were also to tithe to themselves in these additional set-asides. They were not debt-driven; they were thrift-driven. They were to become balanced consumers. Ten percent of their output was to be set aside for partying.

PARTY-POOPERS

Into every life, a little rain must fall. At every party, some scold is out there, telling everyone to tighten up.

In Anglo-American history, my forebears and spiritual godfathers, the Puritans, were the original Christmas party-poopers. In the English civil war era (1643—49), the Puritan-controlled Parliament passed a law making it illegal to sing Christmas carols and feast on Christmas. They thought Christmas was too solemn an occasion to be spent having a good time. Oliver Cromwell, the Lord Protector, enforced the law after King Charles I was beheaded in 1649. Cromwell’s effort in this regard was as doomed as his requirement that women wear no make-up. (No, actually, it wasn’t. Nothing is that doomed. Even Islam is slowly facing this reality. It would make as much sense to ban mirrors.)

The Puritans in Massachusetts passed a law in 1659 that imposed a five-shilling fine on anyone who celebrated Christmas. This was bad timing: 1659 was the year after Cromwell’s death and the year before Charles II ascended to the throne. The English government’s governor, Sir Edmund Andros, hated by the Puritans, revoked the law in 1681.

http://masstraveljournal.com/features/1101chrisban.html

In English literature, Scrooge is the archetypal Christmas party-pooper. He resented Cratchit’s day of paid vacation as theft. But social pressure was too strong. He granted Cratchit his day off. And what did Cratchit do? He spent his saved-up money on celebrating with his family.

Meanwhile, Scrooge’s nephew spent the day celebrating.

The story of Scrooge’s redemption is the story of a man who learned how to celebrate. Although this redemption was secular, its motivation was at bottom religious. It was about learning how to live. Scrooge had been enslaved to the god Jesus warned against as His greatest rival: mammon. His deliverance was in learning how to give away his money, his time, and a large portion of his cares.

Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof (Matthew 6:34).

A BALANCED LIFE

The Protestant Reformation dispensed with most holidays. In addition to Sundays, there were a hundred saint’s days in medieval England in Luther’s time. The Protestants cut back on these celebrations. The Protestant ethic did increase productivity. It did so by emphasizing thrift, and nowhere was this more true than in the transformation of spare time into productive labor.

The Puritans were maniacs regarding time management. Their one full day off was Sunday, and on Sunday they were expected to attend two sermons of up to two hours each, plus spend the afternoon in good works, such as visiting the sick. Some “day off.” The Puritans have been misinterpreted regarding their supposed ban on drinking, but they have never gotten full credit for their suspicion of rest. They did not know how to rest. Their level of dedication to redeeming the time was historically unprecedented, but this dedication cannot not be sustained by most people.

The richer people get — and hard work, thrift, and careful budgeting do make people richer — the less valuable their monetary income becomes, and the more valuable their leisure becomes. This is especially true in societies that have high income taxes, because leisure becomes tax-free income. The Puritans’ heirs have experienced the law of diminishing returns: the returns on staying late at the office.

Modern men have swung to the other side of the pendulum. We waste time at historically unprecedented levels. The time we fritter away in front of “free” TV, consuming our only irreplaceable resource, is a scandal, and most people know it. But, like all addicts, we assure ourselves that we can quit any time we want to.

My wife and I figured out how much time we were wasting the year before we started my newsletter business in 1974. In 1973, we agreed to pay 25 cents for each half hour of television that we watched except for the news or a documentary. The person who wanted to watch a show paid the quarter. We then gave away the money to charity. The only shows that we consistently watched were “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” (I paid) and “The Bob Newhart Show” (she paid), which ran back-to-back, and “Upstairs, Downstairs.” Then our TV blew, and we stopped watching TV for years. We did not miss it.

We didn’t allow our children to watch much TV, and when the second set we owned was hit by lightning and the screen turned pink, we cut back on their viewing even more. One of my daughters (both were English majors in college) attributes her delight in reading to my wife’s suggestion, every time my daughter said she was bored: “Read a book.” She did.

I use TV viewing as the best example of wasted time.

Televised entertainment lacks the holiness of a holiday. There is no celebration. It interferes with feasting. The TV dinner was an abomination. Nothing personal is shared. Nothing is active. TV is passive entertainment. Its audible symbol is the laugh track. Laugh tracks are the mark of TV sitcoms, unlike movies. Comedy is funnier when there is shared laughter. We laugh in a movie theater, so there is no need for laugh tracks. But television is different: isolated viewers. So, the electronic sharing of laughter is offered as a substitute for a room full of laughing people. Bad scripts require laugh tracks. The comedian who gave us the laugh track, Hank McCune, is barely remembered by those of us who vaguely recall that we watched his show, but his 1950 innovation condemns us all. The laugh track is to laughter what professional wailers are to Middle East funerals.

We have become imbalanced, and “free” TV, which is paid for by lost time and by the misery of watching intellectually insulting advertisements as our penance for watching third-rate scripts. Television is our accuser, our Jacob Marley.

THE PRICE-COMPETITIVE SPIRIT OF CHRISTMAS

Every year, we read essays or view brief segments on some TV talk show that accuse us of being imbalanced about the money we spend on Christmas. Atheistic intellectuals who reject the Bible’s story of Christmas as entirely mythical loudly decry the commercialization of Christmas. They have missed the point. The commercialization of Christmas is a visible testimony to what the true spirit of Christmas is all about.

I admit, the Christmas season since 1823 in England has more and more been about giving gifts. But Christmas has always been about celebrating, feasting, and wasting money on “unproductive” activities. It has always been about rejoicing over the fact that we can afford to spend money on a good time. There are two ways to accept this belief: either faith in the power of our hands or faith in God, who gives us our hands, our opportunities, and a hand-out when we mess up our opportunities. But both faiths require open-handed celebration as confirmation. Christmas is the greatest of these celebrations in the West, and by far the most open-handed.

What the critics of Christmas are really targeting is capitalism: the enormous output of products that enables us to give things away at prices lower than Charles Dickens could have imagined. Economics teaches that when prices fall, more is demanded. What bothers the critics of Christmas is that capitalism has lowered prices to such an extent that so much is demanded.

Compared to the percentage of annual income that the Israelites paid to attend the three mandatory festivals, Christmas is the Wal-Mart of national celebrations.

Walk into a toy store. A toy store is nothing short of incredible. Anyone who grew up in the Great Depression cannot comprehend it. Even my post-War, pre-Korea generation can barely believe it. Row upon row, shelves climbing to the ceiling, and high ceilings: there are toys. Toys truly are us.

Toys are the mark of our maturity. Toys tell us when we have become adults. St. Paul said,

I have shewed you all things, how that so labouring ye ought to support the weak, and to remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he said, It is more blessed to give than to receive. (Acts 20:35).

We speak of expensive goods as adult toys, but this is a misuse of language. Toys are playthings that we either receive as children or buy for children. Consumer goods are what we buy for ourselves.

The toy industry and commerce in general depend on consumer spending at Christmas, but this dependence is minimal compared to how much Jerusalem must have depended on income from those three festivals. Americans spend an abnormal percentage of their celebration money on Christmas, but, when compared to the total cost of Israel’s three festivals, Christmas spending is not that much. We do not spend weeks on the road, nor do we pay extra for lodging.

A Christmas dinner is cheap — incredibly cheap when you think of how much we consume, and how much of the packaging and work is done for us before we walk into the supermarket. Think of the trouble it would be to raise turkeys and then kill and prepare them. Think of what it takes to produce a really fat turkey.

As food has become a declining percentage of our income, we have gained weight. As our work has become less physically demanding, we have gained weight. But nobody calls for a return to medieval standards of output, or even nineteenth-century standards. They just tell us to exercise restraint, to become more self-disciplined. Such self-discipline is an aspect of maturity.

But there are limits to self-discipline. Sometimes, too much self-discipline is a sign of immaturity: the immaturity of the unbalanced life. Self-discipline at Christmas is an example. When we hear about “tofu turkey” and low-fat stuffing, most of us gag in advance.

The answer to undisciplined Christmas spending is simple: disciplined saving in advance for Christmas. The evil of overspending at Christmas is not the fault of Christmas; it is the fault of immature adults who refuse to budget, including their tithes of celebration.

We may give the wrong toys to children, or too many toys. We should not blame the inventiveness of toy makers, who have provided us with so many options for our budgets. We should blame ourselves because we have not given sufficient thought to what children will really enjoy.

IT’S THE THOUGHT THAT COUNTS

We say, “It’s the thought that counts.” This saying is the heart of the matter. We like to receive gifts when they reveal the other person’s understanding of what we want. I got the best gift of my life last year, when my to-be-son-in-law got me a videotape of “Down From the Mountain.” I watched that tape all year. It was the gift that keeps on giving. Yet it didn’t cost much money. It was the thought that counted.

Men don’t like to shop for Christmas . . . or anytime, for that matter, except for the few items thy really love. (I shop for used books.) It’s the thought that counts, and they hate to think. “What does she want most this year?” This question reminds us of the grim reality: we don’t have any idea, and we never have. The feminine retort, “You should have known,” haunts us from the day we get married until the day we reach room temperature.

Women like to shop because they regard it as a challenge: figuring out how to please others. Men prefer to write gift certificates. It’s so much easier. But this doesn’t work. That’s because it’s the thought that counts.

We blame the commercial spirit of Christmas for offering us so many ways to please the ever-widening tastes of the recipients of our spirit of sharing. This increase in our options makes our decisions more complex.

What is true of Christmas is true of everything else. Capitalism has delivered the goods in such abundance that we run short of time and creativity to enjoy our output. We blame the fruits of capitalism as if capitalists could provide us with more than twenty-four hours a day, and creativity to go with the added time.

Even if we had forty-eight hours a day, most men would put off shopping until Christmas Eve. (Note: I got caught yesterday. Snow closed the road “down from the mountain.” I couldn’t get into town to do my last-minute shopping. Today, I must pay for my procrastination.)

CONCLUSION

Here is what the critics of Christmas say:

Here is what I say:

Here is the spirit of Christmas: holy waste. This is the spirit that says,

“The world is not against me if God is for me. There’s more where that comes from. I can tithe the season to myself. I can give away toys without guilt. And if someone will offer me a better deal, I’ll respond joyously by buying more — not because it’s good for the economy, but because it’s good for me.”

Have a Merry Christmas. Even if your wife fixes tofu turkey.