[ba-unrev-talk] Re: TPM Online Information: Posting No. 49

[Gary Richmond <garyrichmond@rcn.com>]

Dr Jeremy Stangroom wrote:
> It's Sunday afternoon, and I've been thinking about Christmas. What I want 
> to know is why it isn't possible to mention Christmas without someone opining 
> that it has become 'much too commercial'? What on earth are they talking 
> about? It's always been commercial. After all, didn't some wise men bring the 
> baby Jesus presents as it lay in its crib. Gold and Frank's incense, if I 
> remember correctly. Anyway, the whole point of Christmas is to run up a huge 
> credit card bill. Unless, of course, you've maxed it out buying an oil tanker.
I think the point of the critics of the commercialism of Christmas is that
to the extent that the original message is
obscured--that message being, that the world is redeemed exactly through 
love--commercialism remains an
impediment to the growth of the Law of Love in the world, to the health and
healing of the world through generous,
and even selfless, acts of loving each other as we would be loved.

The symbol of the rich gifts given by the wisemen to the christchild does
not in any way support commercialism;
perhaps a more faithful interpretation is that is is possible for even the
wealthiest and most powerful to come to see, 
that we ought give of what is ours in the world to that which is worthy,
to that which is really and truly of value.

>From exercising this (which is, nothing more than the fundamental
expression of our deepest humanity)  follows the power 
of "the Gospel of Love" (as opposed to what the scientist and philosopher
Charles S. Peirce called "the Gospel of Greed"), and 
even the intellectual summum bonum, the reasonable in itself
(Peirce)

Best regards and Merry Christmas,

Ga;ry Richmond
City University of New York

PS
    
 
JS: That's it for now. Got to go and heckle some people who insist on calling 
Christmas a winter solstice celebration...

GR: Now this I can go along with!
 
> It's Sunday afternoon, and I've been thinking about Christmas. What I want 
> to know is why it isn't possible to mention Christmas without someone opining 
> that it has become 'much too commercial'? What on earth are they talking 
> about? It's always been commercial. After all, didn't some wise men bring the 
> baby Jesus presents as it lay in its crib. Gold and Frank's incense, if I 
> remember correctly. Anyway, the whole point of Christmas is to run up a huge 
> credit card bill. Unless, of course, you've maxed it out buying an oil tanker.
>