Christmas: Celebrating Jesus Christ, or Celebrating Mass Consumption?

To the millions of people who hold some form of Christian belief, whether deep or middling or slight, Christmas is the occasion on which they celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, the spiritual figure who supposedly appeared in the world over twenty centuries ago. Every December, Christians choose to remember that storied nativity mainly by spending enormous amounts of money on the careless purchase of so-called gifts for one another, with most of those gifts being nothing more than useless, unnecessary items: disposable tokens of capitalist waste.

Leading up to December 25, the holiday season unfolds in the manner of a bad dream, an annual rigmarole in which everything is done without thinking. Swarms of shoppers, acting blankly and joylessly, as if they are in a trance, give dreary evidence of having been directed, throughout their lives, to surrender the whole of their being to the greedy corporations that rule over them. Rarely is there any hint of honest faith, and rarely is there any sign of the singular child, born in Bethlehem, who grew up to be regarded as the Son of God.

When examined from a rational perspective, the mindless practice of shopping to excess seems a thoroughly unsuitable means of marking the birth of a man who reportedly condemned the pursuit of wealth, while also preaching a creed of love, peace, charity, and equity. Which is it that Christians are actually celebrating at Christmas: Jesus Christ, or mass consumption? In view of the tasteless folly that Christmas has become, one can only conclude that the true belief of most Christians lies in the evil of capitalism, not in the example of Jesus.