Christmas Commercialism

When I was growing up, Christmas was my favorite holiday. I was a little fuzzy about the Baby in the manger, but I knew all about Santa. I also knew there would be presents. Lots of them. One of my annual pre-Christmas rituals was carefully going through the toy section of the Sears Roebuck catalog and marking my selections in ink. Like Ralphie in A Christmas Story, I wanted to make sure my parents got the message.

My number one present as a kid was a big metal suitcase that unfolded into a castle, complete with knights and vikings. But I also remember an air hockey set that I shared with my brother and sister, assorted robots, and a contraption that heated little plastic squares into monsters.

More often than not, my parents came through and I got what I wanted. But I usually had a big letdown when Christmas was over, because it meant that Christmas was whole year away. For a kid like me, whose philosophy was that it is more blessed to receive than to give, that was a lifetime.

My wife and I remind our kids that Christmas is about Christ, and that the presents under the tree reflect God’s greatest gift, the gift of his Son. But the message doesn’t always get through. The other day, my family was discussing putting up a Christmas tree after Thanksgiving. Unprompted, our four-year-old said, “That’s when Santa comes.”

Of course, Christmas materialism is also stoked by our modern consumer culture. The holiday accounts for about 25 percent of the nation’s annual retail sales. And some of the nation’s retailers are trying to have their Christmas fruitcake and eat it, too. Last year Target told Salvation Army bell-ringers they were no longer welcome on store property. Some stores are telling employees to change their customer greeting from “Merry Christmas” to the more politically correct “Happy Holidays.” Don’t they know the word “holiday” comes from “holy day”?

Anyway, American adults tell the Gallup organization that they expect to spend an average of $763 on Christmas this year. Those earning at least $75,000 a year plan to spend more than $1,100. There’s always something new to buy, too, from iPods to Xboxes to MP3 players. What kind of TV do you want? Plasma or LCD? Flat screen or projection? Your cell phone can take pictures or play music. Hey, it can even make phone calls!

In an earlier era, the general store stocked about a thousand different products, according to the Associated Press. But today, the typical Wal-Mart superstore stocks 130,000 items. Let’s not even talk about the fact that the average household owes $9,500 on its credit cards.

And just what are we doing with all this stuff, anyway? Three so-called “reality” TV shows help people get rid of their junk. And 50 cities in 17 states have chapters of Clutterers Anonymous, which is modeled after Alcoholics Anonymous.

The classic movie It’s a Wonderful Life told us that a bell rang whenever an angel earned his wings. Now the jingling you hear is probably from a cash register.

We Christians are right to be concerned that the culture is trying to take Christ out of Christmas. Let’s just be sure that we don’t bury him in an avalanche of our own holiday junk.

Boob Tube, Indeed

Nearly two years after Janet Jackson’s infamous “wardrobe malfunction” at the Super Bowl, it seems like a good time for a status report. Are the public airwaves getting any cleaner?

In a word, no. In fact, they’re getting worse. That’s the assessment not of right-wing prudes but of a new study by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. According to the study, the number of scenes with sexual content has nearly doubled since 1998. And the share of programs with sexual themes jumped from 56 percent to 70 percent over that same span. Ninety-one percent of comedies had sexual content, compared with 87 percent of dramas and 73 percent of newsmagazines.

I believe these numbers. Don’t you? Nowadays I can’t even watch sports on TV with my kids without the remote in hand because of all the racy promos.

It’s not that I'm pining for a return to shows like Leave It To Beaver. At this point, I’d be happy with The Rockford Files.

The Kaiser Foundation also found that the number of messages about abstinence and so-called “safe sex” has actually fallen. So in other words, in the era of AIDS and other dangerous sexually transmitted diseases, the broadcast networks are actually urging the American people to engage in risky, and perhaps deadly, behavior.

And make no mistake. Sex on TV is not a harmless fantasy. Broadcasters use sex to sell everything from toothpaste to beer, but they’ll swear up and down that shows with sexual content have no effect on our behavior.

Au contraire. There is a clear connection between what we watch and what we do. According to a Rand Corporation study from 2004, teens who watch a lot of sexually suggestive television shows are almost twice as likely to engage in sex earlier than teens who don’t.

After the Janet Jackson debacle, the FCC announced it was cracking down. Yet not much has happened, and politicians are starting to notice. But parents still have the final responsibility for what images and values enter their kids’ minds and hearts.

Here are a couple modest proposals. First, watch whatever your kids watch, and be prepared to discuss it with them. Second, cut back. Most families have financial budgets. Perhaps it’s time for entertainment budgets, too. Instead of allowing the boob tube to hijack all our free time, we should also budget in family times for reading, talking, singing, and playing board games together—whatever allows you to actually relate with your relations.

Properly handled, television can be a good thing. But too much of a good thing, especially television, ain’t good.

No Privacy for Parents

Liberals love the so-called right to privacy. They discovered it decades ago somewhere in the “penumbras” of our Constitution. This ever-expanding right to privacy provides them with legal cover to support everything from abortion on demand to homosexual behavior. But somehow this right to privacy stops at the front door of parents who want to control how and when they discuss the birds and the bees.

Let me explain. Parents of elementary-age children in Palmdale, California, recently took school officials to court. The parents had discovered that district officials had administered a sex survey of their kids without their knowledge or consent. Before you assume these parents were a bunch of up-tight prudes, here are some of the questions their 7- to 10-year-olds were asked. The kids were told to reveal how often they experienced the thought or emotion:

“Touching my private parts too much.”

“Thinking about having sex.”

“Thinking about touching other people's private parts.”

“Not trusting people because they might want sex.”

“Getting scared or upset when I think about sex.”

“Having sex feelings in my body.”

“Can't stop thinking about sex.”

“Getting upset when people talk about sex.”

As the father of three youngsters, I think this survey reveals more about the fixations of the adults who designed and administered it than the kids who were forced to take it.

Many school districts, of course, have “opt-out” provisions when controversial subjects are taught, allowing parents to decide how children should be exposed to certain ideas. The height of tolerance, right? Not in California, apparently.

In November, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in the Palmdale case that parents do not have the final say in sex education. (This is the same court, mind you, that ruled that the words “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance are unconstitutional.) Judge Stephen Reinhardt ruled: "There is no fundamental right of parents to be the exclusive provider of information regarding sexual matters to their children." Reinhardt also wrote that "parents have no due process or privacy right to override the determinations of public schools. . . ."

No one denies that the state has a role in helping to shape the characters of our children, and that there are still many excellent public schools. But in this ruling, the Ninth Circuit Court is trying to usurp the God-given responsibility of parents to raise their children according to the dictates of conscience and religious belief.

If this ruling stands, don’t be surprised if more and more Christian parents choose to “opt out” of public education altogether. At least those who can afford to.

American Pessimism

Peggy Noonan is one of my favorite pundits. A former speechwriter for Ronald Reagan, she generally personifies American optimism. But not now, and that has me worried. In a recent column, Noonan wrote that a lot of Americans think the country is headed in the wrong direction, that, to use her words: “the wheels are coming off the trolley and the trolley [is] off the tracks. That in some deep and fundamental way things have broken down and can't be fixed, or won't be fixed any time soon.”

Further, Noonan says that the trouble encompasses, as she calls it, “the whole ball of wax. Everything. Cloning, nuts with nukes, epidemics; the growing knowledge that there's no such thing as homeland security; the fact that we're leaving our kids with a bill no one can pay. . . . our media institutions imploding. . . . The fear of parents that their children will wind up disturbed, and their souls actually imperiled, by the popular culture in which we are raising them. . . . Great churches that have lost all sense of mission, and all authority.”

Making matters worse, there are many reasons to doubt the ability of our elected leaders to protect us from disaster. And now government officials charged with keeping the nation safe are predicting that 200,000 Americans would die in an outbreak of avian flu. That’s more than those who were incinerated in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

In a new book called Worst Cases, disasterologist Lee Clarke says we need to start thinking about the unthinkable. Clarke quotes political scientist Scott Sagan, who has said, “. . . things that have never happened before happen all the time.”

Our country has periodically faced big challenges, but today the dangers, like weapons of mass destruction, seem to be multiplying. As Noonan says, “Tough history is coming.”

Ancient Israel regularly faced “tough history,” and yet the Psalmist was able to say:

“God is our refuge and strength,
a very present help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear though the earth gives way,
though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea,
though its waters roar and foam,
though the mountains tremble at its swelling.”

Our society has expended much energy in the last four decades seeking to officially distance itself from God, such as by removing prayer from the schools and banning public displays of the Ten Commandments. If “tough history” does indeed await us, I wonder if America will still look to God as our refuge and strength.

We may not have to wait long to find out.