This past Tuesday, the Austin American Statesman published an editorial entitled "Bargains to Die For." The editorial addressed the incident at the Wal-Mart in Valley Stream, New York where an unruly crowd of 2,000 people pushed against the doors, banged on them, and pressed in on them until they gave way. Once through the broken doors, the crowd stormed into the store, knocked over a Wal-Mart employee named Jdimytai Damour, and trampled him to death. According to reports, people stepped over his lifeless body on their way to grab bargains off the shelves.
    In response to this tragedy, the Statesman editorial encouraged us to ponder three things.
    "While Damour's family comes to grips with this tragedy," the editorial stated, "the rest of us should ponder how to prevent future such actions. That should start with an examination of store security during Black Friday." So the first thing this incident should make us think about is store security.
    The second thing this incident should make us think about is crowd control. It is understandable, the editorial reminds us, that shoppers will become "cranky and anxious" if they stand in line for long hours, so retail stores should consider better methods of crowd control and security to handle large crowds of cranky, anxious Christmas shoppers.
    Finally, last on the list, this incident should make us think about "the issue of greed, when stuff becomes more important than human dignity, more significant than a person's welfare or life."
    I was grateful that the Statesman included greed on its list of things Jdimytai Damour's trampling death by a crowd of cranky, anxious Christmas shoppers should move us to ponder. But I must confess that I was disappointed that greed was listed last, as the third of three things this incident should make us think about. Since store security and the control of cranky, anxious crowds deal with symptoms of greedy behavior, it seems to me that greed itself is the more fundamental issue, and therefore, should be at the top of the list at number one.
    Just a thought.
    The very next day, Wednesday, the Statesman ran a little piece in the Food and Life "section as part of an on-going series called Saving the Season." The series features a nice little logo--a Christmas ornament made out of a penny.
This particular installment of the series read:

It can be tough to stick to a budget when those around you are big spenders. No one wants to hand over a pair of socks and receive a Wii in return (or the reverse, for that matter). If everyone agrees on a reasonable limit beforehand, no one will feel resentful for spending too much or guilty for spending too little. In many families, particularly those that are growing exponentially with in-laws and grand-children, drawing names may work best. Even if the spending limit is $75, that can still be a bargain when you consider that each member is buying for only one person.

    On the face of it, this sounds like good advice. But again, I have a confession to make, I find myself becoming increasingly perturbed by the role the corporate-sponsored news media plays in giving consumers helpful tips and advice on how to make the Christmas shopping season more productive, and the Christmas gift-giving and receiving experience less fraught with resentment and guilt.
    Let me translate that for you from language I use in the pulpit to language I use at home when sitting around the kitchen table and sharing my feelings with my family: it bugs the heck out of me when the newspapers and the local television news programs do this--when they give us helpful advice on how to go about Christmas shopping. It bugs me because it is so manipulative. It bugs me because the real message the corporate-sponsored news media is communicating to us is get out there and shop. This is Christmas shopping season, so get out there and shop. Buy stuff. Spend money. You are consumers so consume!
    Just as the cigarette companies, in their internal memos, called the cigarette a "nicotine-delivery device," the corporate-sponsored news media is a message-delivery device for delivering to people's consciousness the message: Christmas season is shopping season. A message-delivery device that links within people's consciousness the two words Christmas and shopping--Christmas shopping--until people come to think that Christmas without shopping is unthinkable.
    The corporate-sponsored media purposefully stirs up people's desire to obtain things, possess things, buy things, hold things, have things through endless advertising that uses all kinds of techniques of temptation, enticement, attraction, persuasion, and allurement, whipping up people's desire into greed, making them cranky and anxious, resentful and guilt-ridden, turning them into unruly mobs capable of killing for that bargain they just can't wait to get their hands on. And then it offers us helpful advice on how to get through this season. How nice.
OK, enough on that. But one more thing.
    I couldn't help but appreciate the irony of the series' title: "Saving the Season." And the logo: money as a Christmas decoration. From my perspective, and this is why the Statesman has not hired me to write, "Saving the Season" would be a great title for a series reminding people they don't have to do any Christmas shopping at all, reminding people they don't have to pay any attention to all of that advertising aimed at stirring up their desires, reminding people they don't have to become anxious or cranky, resentful or guilt-ridden. All of that is contrived, and none of it has a penny's worth to do with Christmas.
    While I'm on the topic, I was watching Public Television's The News Hour recently. It was probably Tuesday or Wednesday when I was already all worked up over this Christmas shopping thing. Jeffery Brown was leading several economists in a discussion on the impact consumer confidence would have on, what else?--the Christmas shopping season. The question the economists were discussing was: will the American consumer come through to rescue the economy during this year's Christmas shopping season?
    One of the panelists, a Harvard economist whose name I can't remember, was guardedly optimistic, saying (and I do remember this), that even though the American consumer is feeling the economic pinch this year and consumer spending is down, we all want to be patriotic and go out and shop this Christmas season to help the economy.
    As you can imagine, when I heard this, I was perturbed.
    Consider for a moment the assumption underlying this statement. It is patriotic to shop. It is patriotic to consume, especially during the Christmas shopping season when the nation's economy depends on us to do our duty.
    But there is an even deeper assumption underlying the economist's statement, a more fundamental assumption that not many people question, one most people simply take for granted: the health of our economy, measured by growth in consumption, requires the constant creation of more consumers who can consume above and beyond what they need, and who can consume more than they used to. In other words, continuous growth in consumption is not only healthy but necessary. Hence, the patriotic act of doing what is necessary to restore health to our economy, the patriotic act of shopping and consuming during Christmas shopping season.
    But is this an assumption we should simply accept without giving it further thought?
There are some prophetic voices out there, prophetic voices belonging to some very smart people whose opinions you typically won't read in the op-ed pages of the corporate-sponsored mainstream press, prophetic voices claiming there is plenty of evidence to show that our economy, whose "health" we measure in terms of growth in consumption, is seriously damaging the environment in which we live--damaging the land base and its biodiversity, poisoning our air and water, dangerously heating up our climate, and killing species at an alarming and accelerating rate.
    In other words, it is time to seriously rethink our underlying assumptions about consumption, and more people are doing just that.
    It is time to rethink the relationship between Christmas and shopping, between Christmas and consumption, and more people, including many of you, are doing just that.
    I for one no longer uncritically accept the assumption that an economy whose health is measured by growth in consumption is good for our planet. In fact, those prophetic voices have convinced me that a change in lifestyle, one based on less consumption, is a necessity if we are to save our planet. You may have different thoughts on that, but I hope that you are at least thinking about it, and thinking about it with the seriousness this issue deserves.
    Because of the way I now think about the economy and the health of the planet, I have come to see the economic and cultural practice of linking the celebration of Jesus' birth with a season of super-consumption to be ludicrous. For me, the bottom line is this:

• Powerful corporations who exist to make money from our consumption have convinced too many people that shopping and consuming is an inherent and necessary part of Christmas. This is a delusion. It has absolutely no basis in reality.
• The planet cannot in the long-term sustain our level of consumption. To believe our planet can sustain our level of consumption is a delusion. It has no basis in reality.
• Celebrating the birth of Jesus--the one who saves us from the error of our ways, the one who saves us from the destructive patterns that do us, other people, and God's creation harm, the one who awakens us from delusion to truth--celebrating the birth of Jesus by participating in a frenzy of shopping and consumption betrays everything for which he lived and died.
  

    For me, that's the bottom line. Linking the birth of Jesus to a season of shopping and consumption is a delusion, it furthers a delusion that we can consume more and more forever, and it betrays Jesus himself.
Derrick Jenson writes, "In order to maintain our way of living, we must tell lies to each other, and especially to ourselves."
Ben Okri writes, "Nations and peoples are largely the stories they tell themselves. If they tell themselves stories that are lies, they will suffer the future consequences of those lies. If they tell themselves stories that face their own truths, they will free their histories for future flowering."
    For me, I'm finding that many of the stories we are told, and many of the stories we tell ourselves about our way of life, about how we define economic health, about our relationship with our environment, about the relationship between Christmas and shopping are delusions. They're lies. I'm finding that only by facing truth, inconvenient as it may be, do we hold out the possibility of a future flowering.
    And truth, inconvenient as it may be, is far more beautiful than any delusion or lie. Mark Nepo writes, "Beauty is what's left when all the illusions are scoured away."
    I'll leave you with this thought: perhaps that's what the silence did to Zechariah--scoured away his illusions. Maybe nine months of not being able to speak, nine months of not being able to converse with others, maybe this thrust Zechariah into a far greater and far deeper solitude, with far more time to reflect on reality. Maybe the nine months of silence scoured away his illusions and delusions, the stories he had always told himself about what God could do and couldn't do, the illusions and delusions and stories that moved him to disbelief. Maybe after nine months of silence, Zechariah discovered some awesome beauty within himself, within God, within the reality around him, some beauty he had never seen before.
    Maybe we need more silence in our preparation for Christmas. Not just more time to silence ourselves by talking less, but the more profound silence of solitude.
    Perhaps silence can scour away our illusions during this season when our senses are assaulted and infiltrated by constant advertisement, propaganda, illusions, delusions, and lies.
    Silence that can scour us deeply till all we see is the true beauty of Christmas.
    The simple beauty. The spiritual beauty. The beauty of God being with us in a new way. Or perhaps even more profoundly, the beauty of God being with us in a way God has always been with us, but in a way we now finally see.
    Christmas. With no crankiness and anxiety. With no resentment or guilt. With no out of control mobs, no innocent people getting killed, no damage done to the earth.
That would truly be a beautiful Christmas. That would truly honor the birth of Jesus of Nazareth.

A follow-up to this reflection is found on December 14: "On Further Thought...Can We Talk Further About the Dilemma of Christmas and Shopping?" The follow-up addresses the critique: what about those people who would lose their job if we all stopped Christmas shopping? A very real concern that requires further thought.

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