The Consumer's Christmas -- A Weak Defense

So call this a weak defense of the consumer's Christmas. It's a weak defense, because I'm ready with a hundred caveats. Isaiah's "fat things" are full of marrow, and so our abundance should be full of meaning: empty consumption merely for its own sake never was joy. And as Chesterton observes, the special appeal of Christmas depends on the contrast between a bountiful feast and the bleak midwinter: if we indulge our consumer impulses without restraint all year, then Christmastime bounty means nothing. Nor should our seasonal abundance be entirely retail: music and food and beauty and fun and, crucially, reverence and awe and worship are all a part of the joy. I suspect that Sharon and I really are very close together in our sense of how the holiday should be celebrated. But this year my Christmas mise-en-scene will include a feast of fat things, a panoply of rejoicing, and plenty fit for the King of Kings.

 

Rosalynde Welch is a wife, mother, thinker, and blogger at http://timesandseasons.org where this was originally published.

12/15/2009 5:00:00 AM
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