For the complete report from TheStar.com click on this linkWhy Christ was removed from Christmas by Merchants: "The naughty truth about Christmas" - by Sandro Contenta
When the Three Wise Men visited baby Jesus, they brought luxury goods: gold, frankincense and myrrh. Loaded with symbolism, perhaps, but certainly superfluous when a blanket would have done just fine. Some 2,000 years later, devout readers of the New Testament story lament the loss of the piety and Christian values the wise men embodied. All that remains, according to the often-heard refrain, is excess. You don't have to be religious to recognize the supremacy of consumerism, particularly at this time of year. The facts speak for themselves: In Canada last December, Canadians spent $28.7 billion shopping, excluding purchases in the automotive sector. Per capita, that's $874 for each consumer, well above the monthly average of $630 for the rest of the year, according to Statistics Canada.
You will also find the same exorbitant figures the US and Europe. By comparison, church attendance in Canada and much of the Western world has plummeted. Shopping malls, as everyone knows, are the new temples. An Angus Reid poll last week found 85 per cent of Canadians surveyed believe Christmas has lost its "spiritual meaning." "Christmas is the quintessential celebration of our entitlement to abundance. So how are you going to fight that?" says University of Illinois marketing professor Cele Otnes, who has researched Christmas gift buying.Merchants have jumped on the Christmas bandwagon in Japan, Hong Kong, and northern India, and are increasingly catering to the holiday in Beijing, says Russell Belk, a marketing professor at York University. The results are sometimes curious, like the Tokyo department store that decorated its Christmas tree with red women's panties or the one that displayed a crucified Santa Claus.
And yet, despite the righteous doom and gloom, the excessive behaviour feels right. What would Christmas be without the binge eating and the maxing out of credit cards? Certainly not the kind of feast it has been for millennia. "I don't think Christmas has ever been primarily celebrated as a Christian holiday," says historian Stephen Nissenbaum, author of the acclaimed book, The Battle for Christmas. "Christmas has never been controlled by Christians. It has never been Christianized. They didn't control it when it was carnival and misrule, and they don't control it now that it's corporate capitalism," he says. To a certain extent, some Christian churches have only themselves to blame for complaints of how Christmas is celebrated. The trouble began early in the 4th century, when the Roman church picked Dec. 25 as the day to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, although nothing in the Bible suggests that date. The church was piggybacking on a well-established festive period. The pagan midwinter festival in ancient Roman times, Saturnalia, celebrated a time of abundance. The harvest was in, the new wine and beer was ready to drink, and the air was cold enough for animals to be slaughtered and meat preserved, "What you've got is a combination of an unusual amount of leisure time, because the men had finished their work, and plenty of food and drink. That's a very combustible mix – and it combusted," says Nissenbaum, a professor at the University of Massachusetts. The result was several days of wild outdoor partying in late December, what Nissenbaum says might today strike us as a sexually charged blend of Mardi Gras, Halloween and New Year's Eve.
