Friday, December 11, 2015

Saving Christmas

There are two times of the year for which the Colonel's disdain-o-meter pegs.

One is that foul-breathed, runted dragon of a month, February, whose wanton waste of space on the Colonel's calendar drives him to rabid mental and physical excess, seeking a minimizing temporal distortion.

The Colonel has never been convinced -- and many have tried -- that the month of February holds any redeeming value.  It is the desert wasteland on the annual landscape through which one must traverse, maddening inexorably with thirst for something -- anything -- of intellectual or manly pursuit with which to sustain one's self.

If February was a man, the Colonel would challenge him to a duel.   

Every stinkin' day. 

The other time of year that wrings the Colonel's rag is Christmas.

Yeah, that's right.  The Colonel hates Christmas.   

Well,... it's not so much that the Colonel hates Christmas.  The reason for the season is his raison d'etre. 

The Colonel hates what everybody else has done with Christmas.

The Colonel hates the artificial amplification of cheer pumped into every human activity, and the subsequent disdain in which anyone is held who doesn't routinely sidle up to the helium tank to have his balloon bloated with faux spirit.

The Colonel doesn't mind being told to "have a Merry Christmas."  He just doesn't appreciate the cheerful condescension from most whose demeanor in the other eleven months of the year bordered on sullen with a side order of disgruntled.

The Colonel ain't no hypocrite -- he'll remain sullen and disgruntled all year long, thank you very much.

The Colonel hates the ubiquitous donation hustlers, parked outside Sam Walton's ultimate expression of capitalism, ladling out guilt for not responding to their call to give.  Oh, don't think the Colonel didn't notice the subtle quickening of bell-ringing pace as he brushed by.  And, telling him "Merry Christmas?"  Might as well have yelled out "Scrooge!"  

The Colonel hates that Christmas has become in many minds the counter-attack campaign season in the cultural long-war.  Keep Christ in Christmas?  The Colonel didn't take Him out.  Seems to the Colonel that anyone who needs to be reminded to keep Christ in Christmas many not have ever had Christ in their hearts.

It just might be that anyone who feels the duty to not-so gently remind others to keep Christ in Christmas, or who respond with crusader-like outrage at perceived assaults on Christianity, may need to do a little recentering of their lives on Jesus' teaching. 

In the Colonel's not-so humble opinion, keeping Christ in Christmas starts and ends in his own heart.  If he does what Jesus would have him do, the Colonel is convinced, without a shadow of a doubt in his military mind, that the Spirit that animates his faith will do the rest.

He might even start to like February.

Christmas doesn't need men to save it.  Christmas is salvation.               

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Outstanding! You're not really the curmudgeon you purport to be...you're a God-fearing man with a fine talent. I just hope you have a wide readership.