A Modest Proposal[1]

Move Christmas.

I mean Christmas. Not Kwanzaa or Hanukkah or any other Holidays (etymologically "holy days") that happen to fall around the same time and become diluted alternatives (which deserve their own focus apart from Jesus).

I had a Sunday School teacher, Mr Parenti (a large, good man who loved Jesus) who said you know where Jesus is truly celebrated by how hard the Devil works to subvert it. Easter and Christmas are top examples of where Jesus is under assault. (Mr Parenti was putting a slight twist on an old bit of conventional wisdom - you know what someone truly stands for by who their enemies are.)

Thanksgiving is a notable exception, Mr Parenti said. He said that there is no Easter Bunny or Santa for Thanksgiving "because Jesus isn't in it." I agree, to a point.

Christians do observe Thanksgiving in a way the world does not. If you are in a Christian home for Thanksgiving, it's different from the world, and you know it. However, Thanksgiving is still fairly ignored by Madison Avenue, because there's little money to be made apart from food sales, and retailers are concerned about holiday spending, which begins the next day (or more commonly now, on Thanksgiving Day itself).

So I say: Since we don't know when Jesus was born, move the Christian Christmas to Thanksgiving, call it Christgiving - has a ring to it, don't you think? - and celebrate both on the same day. Let the world rush where it will.

How long will that give us? I figure another 2,000 years, give or take, before we have to move it again.

Unfortunately, we are living in a progressively diluted world, and every successive generation dilutes it further, not realizing they are living in a diluted solution already; and this will go on until the observance has only a vestigial resemblance to the original and there remain a few molecules of Jesus floating around in a solution of glitter and lights and apathetic renditions of seasonal sounds like so much Christmas morning vomit from the previous night's merry-making.

[1]
With apologies to Jonathan Swift.