Who started this 'Christmas thing' ?

[jingle]

There's a story of a woman who was Christmas shopping with her two children. After many hours of looking at row after row of toys and hearing both her children asking for everything they saw on those many shelves and other things in the store, she finally made it to the elevator with her kids.

She was feeling what so many of us feel during the holiday season time of the year.....overwhelming pressure to go to every party, every house warming, taste all the holiday food and treats, getting that perfect gift for every single person on our shopping list, making sure we don't forget anyone on our card list, and the pressure of making sure we respond to everyone who sent us a card.

Finally the elevator doors opened and there was already a crowd in the elevator. She pushed her way into the elevator and dragged her two kids in with her and all her purchases. When the doors closed she couldn't take it anymore and stated "Whoever started this whole Christmas thing should be found, strung up and shot."

From the back of the elevator everyone heard a quiet, calm voice respond, "Don't worry, we already crucified him."

For the rest of the trip it was so quiet you could have heard a pin drop.

Don't forget this year to keep the One who started this whole Christmas thing in your every thought, word, deed and purchases.

Keep Christ in Christmas!

If we all do, just think of how different this whole world would be.
Merry Christmas!

[Curious]

thank you jingle. i think this should be put on cars at the mall.

[Idealist]

I agree with the monkey. What a wonderful message, Jingle! I had never heard that story before. I'm going to forward that to my sister. She could use that exact story right now.

[Chemar]

oh how sadly true that is Jingle!

our family celebrates Christmas in a very low key fashion as a conscious rejection of the commercial event it has become.

every year around this time, a 1950s poem by Lawrence Ferlinghetti echoes in my mind.

CHRIST CLIMBED DOWN
Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
there were no rootless Christmas trees
hung with candycanes and breakable stars

Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
there were no gilded Christmas trees
and no tinsel Christmas trees
and no tinfoil Christmas trees
and no pink plastic Christmas trees
and no gold Christmas trees
and no black Christmas trees
and no powderblue Christmas trees
hung with electric candles
and encircled by tin electric trains
and clever cornball relatives

Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
no intrepid Bible salesmen
covered the territory
in two-tone cadillacs
and where no Sears Roebuck creches
complete with plastic babe in manger
arrived by parcel post
the babe by special delivery
and where no televised Wise Men
praised the Lord Calvert Whiskey

Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
no fat handshaking stranger
in a red flannel suit
and a fake white beard
went around passing himself off
as some sort of North Pole saint
crossing the desert to Bethlehem
Pennsylvania
in a Volkswagen sled
drawn by rollicking Adirondack reindeer
and bearing sacks of Humble Gifts
from Saks Fifth Avenue
for everybody's imagined Christ child

Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
no Bing Crosby carollers
groaned of a tight Christmas
and where no Radio City angels
iceskated wingless
thru a winter wonderland
into a jinglebell heaven
daily at 8:30
with Midnight Mass matinees

Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and softly stole away into
some anonymous Mary's womb again
where in the darkest night
of everybody's anonymous soul
He awaits again
an unimaginable
and impossibly
Immaculate Reconception
the very craziest of
Second Comings

Lawrence Ferlinghetti, famous for running the City Lights bookstore in San Francisco, wrote this poem in the 1950s and published it in his book: A Coney Island of the Mind, Poems by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, A New Directions Book, Copyright 1958 by Lawrence Ferlinghetti.

[Curious]

i am so with you chemar.

i had never done the santa thing with da monkeys. we celebrated christmas like a birthday party. kept to the reason of christmas. hehehe..a few years even wrapped the packages in birthday paper.

my mother is the one who got lil'monkey turned on to santa when they moved here.

this year we have gotten back to the true meaning of giving. not a bunch of gifts...but giving something of themselves. what we call time, talent, treasure. we make up coupon books for each person. some of the coupons are to offer our time to them. like an hour of made up story telling to grandmonkey. talent is giving something that you are good at to another. like lil'money giving a coupon to her dad to vacuum out his car. and treasure is find a little something of ours own...a trinket that we like and give it to somebody else.

i love these coupon books!! i have the hardest time not using them up fast. hehe.

[Idealist]

We've done that with the coupon books too, Curious. It always works out so great...

But for some reason, whenever my kids make me coupons, I tend to hold on to them instead of cashing them in...

[Curious]

did they put expiration dates on them? if not..start cashing them in!