HARMON: A season of perpetual acquisition
Just two days till Christmas! According to the Gospels, this should be one of the most important days in all of Christendom as we celebrate the birth of a Savior. You can't talk about this stuff too much at school anymore but there are still those who somehow get the message. The idea of eternal life, seeing loved ones again, hearing your name read from The Book of Life, a heavenly choir with the sweetest of sounds, not to mention the most important thing of all, that is to see Him face to face, should be enough.
It should be, but somehow, like other things we tamper with as humans, we've screwed it up.
Now, "Here comes Santa Claus, right down Santa Claus lane!" "Bring on the goodies darling and get those Wal-Mart doors open or somebody's going to be rolling in the aisle and I'm not talking about laughing!" "Tis the season to be jolly and the one thing that makes me jolly is not the holly but mounds of, you guessed it, things! There had better be a Black Friday or somebody is going to get a black eye!"
Yes, instead of celebrating this most hallowed of days, we find ourselves ducking and dodging in the checkout line from hell, spending money it will take the better of three months to recoup. "Honey, let's do something really stupid this year and begin the New Year three months in arrears!"
"Oh, Babycakes, you are so right on. Let's go shopping! I saw some great bargains sitting right here on our yet to be paid for furniture in front of our still mortgaged TV in this house we can barely afford."
And off they go to contribute to the economy in the name of Christmas.
Well, I'm not going to sit here and say I didn't believe in Santa Claus. I rode that sleigh till I was darn near 12 years old because not believing could have meant not receiving and giving was out of the question. Nowadays, I am my own Santa Claus and when this time of year rolls around I get in the spirit and feel free to spend some serious money on myself. I call it the "spirit of entitlement" whereby I refuse to believe I don't deserve what everybody else seems to have, regardless of how they came about their ability to get it (It's possible I'm not the only one out there with this spirit). I buy things I wouldn't even think about buying in June.
For instance, in June I would normally say to the wife, "We don't really need that, do we, or you don't really want that do you?" But in December I'm thinking needs and wants are two different animals and whether or not I need something has nothing to do with whether or not I want it. After all, "We can always take it back."
Which sometimes we do, realizing we've come this way before, a moment of material insanity brought on by marketing experts who know us better than we know ourselves.
I don't know how old one is before they begin to seriously doubt the existence of Santa Claus, supposing it's whenever you realize reindeer couldn't possibly fly, but we put it off as long as possible. Tinkerbell, Mary Poppins and people who live in Colorado can do it ... so why not reindeer? So we flirt with the idea that, yes, there just might be a Santa Claus and I need to err on the side of having something under the tree. After all, haven't my letters been answered with a North Pole return address? (Which begs the question. Where will Santa live when that thing melts?) And doesn't he seem to always come through with the exact stuff I wrote about? My wife, who is always in the "Christmas spirit" and contributing to the economy, thinks I have a bah humbug attitude where Christmas is concerned. I suppose it's because Santa stopped returning my letters over 50 years ago and things just haven't been the same since.
Sonny Harmon is a professor emeritus at Georgia Military College. Visit his blog at http://sharmon09.blogspot.com.
This story was originally published December 22, 2015 at 9:12 PM with the headline "HARMON: A season of perpetual acquisition ."