COMMENTARY: Christmas amid our economic anxieties

c. 1997 Religion News Service UNDATED _ A”macro”view of the American economy requires a loftier perch than most of us can obtain. But at ground zero, our mutual economic adventure looks like this: On the Friday after Thanksgiving, the parking lot at Target started to fill at 7:30 a.m. When the doors at the local […]

c. 1997 Religion News Service

UNDATED _ A”macro”view of the American economy requires a loftier perch than most of us can obtain. But at ground zero, our mutual economic adventure looks like this:

On the Friday after Thanksgiving, the parking lot at Target started to fill at 7:30 a.m. When the doors at the local mall opened at 6:00 a.m., over 100 people were waiting. College students home for the holiday scoured the city looking for short-term jobs for the Christmas break.


In the world of consumer spending, this is it. Thanksgiving weekend accounted for an estimated 10 percent of the year’s take. The entire five-week buying season will make or break many businesses. A sense of emergency, even desperation, seems to pervade the marketplace. Merchandise is already knocked down to after-Christmas prices. It’s now or never.

From the merchant tending his store to the marketing VP following daily trends, all eyes are on the shopper. What will we buy this year? How much deeper into debt will we go? What combination of seasonal music, cheery decor, perky sales people, relentless advertising and bargain prices will bring forth plastic?

A few worry about losing the season’s religious focus. But that voice sounds increasingly sentimental and out of touch. This is serious stuff. Bread on the table in July literally depends on who buys what during this compressed commercial frenzy.

Indeed, the religious community is itself a player in the fray. At some churches, December’s revenues will be 25 percent of the year’s total. Giving at Christmas services will determine which clergy and staff get cost-of-living increases next year. Kids might dream of a white Christmas, but church leaders know that bad weather on Christmas Eve can sink the budget. Christian bookstores deploy as much glitz as Borders.

Two tensions are emerging. One is about us as consumers. Many people have maxed out on debt. The flood of credit-card offers has abated. Personal bankruptcies are soaring. Houses aren’t selling. The hot turf in auto sales is the used car lot. Corporate workers check bulletin boards daily for signs of further layoffs. Vendors watch nervously as Woolworth shuts down, Sears searches for an identity, and even giant Wal-Mart fires managers and rethinks its domestic expansion.

A lot rides on our willingness to enter into temporary insanity. A rational self-assessment would keep most of us at home. We can’t afford a”big Christmas”this year. We’re still paying for the one we couldn’t afford last year. To loosen our wallets, the consumer world needs for us to lose touch with reality, forget who we are, get caught up in a spirit larger than our nighttime worries, and spend money we don’t have.

We might laugh at shoppers who wait outside mall doors at 6 a.m. But in an economy of thin margins and tentative employment, we all depend on whatever spirit drives someone to seek meaning in shopping.


The other tension is about us as children of God. Shorn of its sentimental images and pageant cuteness, the Christmas event was God’s response to the very desperation we now feel. Currier & Ives might portray this as a time of cheerful families sledding together, but the event itself came at a time of desperation: an oppressive empire clinging to power, local rulers frightened of their people, a religious establishment gone corrupt, people living not only in bondage to Rome, but in the lassitude of self-centeredness.

Getting close to the so-called”meaning of Christmas”requires more self-examination than many of us can muster at a time of such practical worries. Calm spiritual reflection seems a luxury grounded in prosperity. Many people, like the shepherds of yore, are too busy working and worrying to watch a new star rise. We, too, will need to be taken by surprise, given something that we cannot give ourselves.

The irony, it seems to me, is that we have spent, borrowed and worried ourselves into exactly the right posture for Christmas to have some meaning. Our ability to save ourselves has proven to be as bankrupt as Woolworth’s. Angels will have to come find us. And that is what angels do.

DEA END EHRICH

Donate to Support Independent Journalism!

Donate Now!