I think there are fewer people calculating their Christmas input vs output than some may imagine.

Also, I would argue that Americans have known, most for well over a year, the pagan roots of holidays like Christmas and Easter. This is not a news flash. Those who still knowingly celebrate do so because whatever it once may have meant (fertility rite or whatever) it means something different now. You are going to have to give me some slack, because I sincerely believe that a holiday that encourages such an outpouring of love and generosity, socially and culturally and in the name of Christ, regardless of the occasional glutton, has definite Christian value.

Curiously, D&C 52:8 adds the modifier “that a feast of fat things might be prepared for the poor” to Isaiah’s passage. Any thoughts on how this verse might change how we might but a uniquely Mormon spin on Isaiah’s phrase, without becoming overly Puritanical?

I don’t see how your second sentence follows.

I didn’t intend for the second sentence to be a conclusion from the first, it is just my own prediction based on my observation of holidays. The ones with lots of tradition and comercialism seem to get more attention and focus overall, which includes more attention and focus on the meaning of the holiday as well.

What I love about all the “evil consumerism” of Christmas is that it is people making purchases of excess to give them away.

Balderdash! People calculate are very aware of the value of the stuff they get from their friends, and if it’s less than what they gave them, they’re offended.

When did gluttony cease to be a sin?

Our current Christmas traditions in the “western” world are an adaptation of the Scandinavian Yule (originally Jul(e)), that is a pagan festival of fertility, when people tried to ascertain a plentiful new year by offering foods to gods, and by participating in gluttony and sexual rituals in reckless abandon. And the evergreens were there to symbolize fertility (green plant life in midwinter was to them a symbol of the hope of life after the brutal winter).

You could read Joseph Frazer’s Golden Bough; it gives a more entertaining picture of that than Wikipedia.

OTOH, I have nothing against celebrating the birth of the Savior. But I don’t do it by fattening the wallets of the “gods” of consumerism. It may be that spending money is the patriotic thing to do in a recession/depression, but one could spend it in something semi-useful instead of gazillion tons of tinsel.

Easter has the excuse of falling at the same time (approximately) as the Jewish Pesach, but the name gives it away as another pagan fertility rite thinly veiled in Christian meaning by giving a little lip service. The lip service used to be more visible, with most people going to church. What else were they going to do in a time, when the church (meaning the medieval Catholic Church) controlled most people’s lives to surprisingly great degree.

When Christianity was to become a religion of the masses after Constantine declared it a state religion, the bishops, who by that time were surprisingly corruptible by secular authority and money, converted several pagan rituals to Christian celebrations by giving them a thin coating of Christian liturgy. They did that to avoid outright rebellion against the forced conversion to a strange religion.

Naturally, there were people who sincerely bought all that Christian rhetoric.

When I converted to the restored gospel, I decided to leave the false traditions of my fathers behind. These pagan rituals clothed in Christian rhetoric were some of them. Since then I have given slack to people, who sincerely believe in their Christian value.

Let’s face it, there are a lot of sincere people.

I don’t mean to criticize sincere people, but there are also a lot of people, who sincerely believe that the more stuff they buy the better people they are. Think of it whatever you will.

That goes for my Christmas indulgences, anyway. Other people who do more than me are obviously missing the reason for the season and I enjoy sneering at them.

:)

I don’t see how your second sentence follows.