Mixed media: Scrooge and the Christmas Spirit

Festive Appeal

JEWISH DELIGHT: Christmas time has a lot to offer, for non-Christians like me as well. And if a Jew can love a Christian holiday even after Mel Gibson said we killed the guy whose birth it celebrates, well then, that's saying something. Christmas is why I go to college. My father, who is a toy salesman, thanks Jesus Christ every day for Christmas time. Many people say the commercialisation of Christmas is the work of Satan. Well, I say the un-commercialisation of Christmas would be the work of Osama bin Laden. So there.

* Josh Katz in the Cornell Daily Sun

AFRICAN CELEBRATION: Nairobi's sprawling Kibera slum has been labelled one of the biggest and worst on the African continent. Lilian, a lay preacher there, says: "On the night of the 24th, most people keep vigil, and at midnight you will hear people all over the slums, shouting 'Merry Christmas' to each other and cheering."

Although she thinks some aspects of Christmas are being commercialised, Lilian says people in Kibera still value it. "As we see it, it's the only day that we, all Christians, come together."

* News 24 website


LOBBYING WEBSITE: A covert and deceptive war has been waged on Christmas to remove any mention of it from the public square during the Christmas season. The festive atmosphere of the past that surrounded the Christmas season in department stores which energised shoppers, supported their culture and tradition, and excited them to select just the right gift for friends and family for the Christmas celebration has been severely diminished.

The primary goal of the Committee to Save Merry Christmas is to preserve the culture and tradition of the vast majority of Americans who celebrate and honour Christmas.

* Save Merry Christmas (link below)

BRITISH COLUMNIST: Capitalism is a born thief. So, really, given that Christmas is a relatively trivial event - pagan to begin with anyway, scarcely representing the sine qua non of faith to any serious Christian, embraced by everyone, regardless of faith, as a good excuse to get really drunk - we should be pleased that it's been turned into this orgy of consumption (as in purchasing, not tuberculosis - that would be a very risky and unpleasant orgy).

So much has been swiped that was more important. Jingle bells is the least of our worries.

* Zoe Williams in the Guardian

Something Sinister

GRUMPY BLOGGER: The excessiveness of the Western Christmas season just makes me feel a little nauseous.

People overspending on food they will never eat; cheesy swathes of cheap, plastic decorations and all that nonsense hanging inside and out; kids demanding bits of plastic crap at $50 a shot because they saw it on the TV; parents who can't really afford it going into debt just so their kids can keep up with the Joneses. Just what is that all about?

* Joshua Ink blog

AMERICAN COMMENTATOR:The original intent of the Christmas message is obscured not only in the boisterous celebration of something that has nothing to do with the reason for the season, but now also involves lawyers and complaining liberal and conservative ministers who either demand that people not celebrate Christmas or want everyone to celebrate it as they do.

The culture has shoplifted a most glorious event - God becoming man - and appropriated it for the sole purpose of persuading people to buy stuff they can't afford for people who don't need it.

* Cal Thomas in the Rockdale Citizen

MINNEAPOLIS NEWSPAPER: Each year, the true spirit of the season is unmasked in malls, parking lots and grocery stores, not to mention behind closed doors.

There is something slightly sinister lurking beneath the joy; a sense of irritability and tension bred by relentless materialism and the frustrated desire for true peace and happiness.

* Syl Jones in Minneapolis Star Tribune

AMERICAN BLOGGER:The release of the movie Christmas With the Kranks, based on the John Grisham bestseller Skipping Christmas, is another manifestation of the trend towards simplification and especially away from the overweening commercialisation of the Christmas season. It's kind of at cross purposes, though ...

"OK, here's the pitch: we take this huge Grisham bestseller about rejecting the over-commercialisation and mindless consumerism of Christmas and we make it into a big holiday-season film with millions earmarked for ads so millions will shell out 8$ apiece to see it.

Yeah! That's the ticket!"

* Blog Sisters