"Don't Get So Uptight About Yuletide Commercialism"

This article appeared in the Greenville News on Friday. It was written by Rabbi Marc H. Wilson, and I thought it sounded remarkably similar to what Pope Benedict XVI had to say...

"It came upon a midnight... and I dreamed this most disquieting dream:

"Blustery preachers and crabby commentators had finally gotten their fondest Yuletide wish: Commercialism had been eradicated from the holiday spirit as surely as St. George had slain the dragon. And those who would piously denounce society's insidious materialism had finally attained all that they had hoped for... not.

"So the malls went un-bedecked, no faux snowdrifts, or robotic nutcrackers, or dewy memory-photos of little Jessica on Santa's lap. The Muzak tinkled another canned rendition of "I Wanna Hold Your Hand." "The First Noel" and "O Holy Night" were banished to holiday parties, where Aunt Myrtle struggled to remember the words and cranky kids squirmed impatiently.

"Only then did we realize how much of our sense of seasonal all's-well-ness had not been a function of happenstance or Sunday school dogma. No, it had come from being inundated by sights and sounds that touched primal yearnings for home and comfort and childhood, heart tugs driven by the wheels of insidious commercialism..."

Click here to read the rest of the article.