We could use some of that incense about now
At some point every holiday season, in spite of the miraculous gift of the Internet -- and as Christmas shopping goes, I believe the Internet is only slightly short of divine intervention -- I venture out of the "virtual" marketplace and into the real one. Even, if absolutely necessary (be a balm upon my soul, Jesus), to the mall.
There's still something about actually buying gifts from real people and walking to your car with armloads of real bags and boxes that I think I'd miss, for all the hassle.
The hassle is real. Traffic is nightmarish, parking is insane, stores and shopping centers are crowded with both Christmas-cheerful people and sullen snarly people. This in spite of the whole "Peace and Good Will" thing, and there's apparently an obscure seasonal law that requires all places of commerce to maintain a uniform indoor temperature of 96.
The secret seems to be a matter of just getting into the right frame of mind. So I find (eventually) a parking place, take a deep breath, try to look and feel cheerful, and plunge in.
I'm thinking here of Dickens' Ghost of Christmas Present -- the jovial spirit who, invisible to all but Scrooge, shakes drops of magical incense from his blazing torch on the humble dinners of poor people and on the heads of quarrelsome ones and makes them all joyful, if only for Christmas Day. I like to think that invisible Ghost turns up occasionally in all those jostling crowds and shakes a little of his holiday seasoning on our heads when we need it.
If there's one group of folks who could really use his help -- who've needed it desperately, in fact, for several years now -- it's those pitiable souls who claim to love Christmas but get crankier and crankier with its approach; who are ever on the prowl for the tiniest signs that the rest of the world -- especially (and curiously, if you think about it) the commercial world -- is not living up to their demands for Christmas conformity; whose most treasured Christmas tradition has become the act of taking loud and indignant offense at the spectacularly inoffensive.
The early offender this year (and we're barely past Halloween) is a red coffee cup. There will no doubt be plenty more, held up as insidious threats to everything holy by shameless media charlatans who have made an industry of culture war in a season celebrating the Prince of Peace.
How very sad.
It's sad because not a single soul needs to be threatened, or bothered, or offended, by any of these trivial things we're being urged to fear and loathe, at a time of year that's supposed to be the opposite of fear and loathing.
Does anything about your observance of Christmas, your joy in the season, the fellowship and warmth of family and friends, your celebration of the coming of Christ, really depend on what's on the wall of a department store, or how you're greeted by some poor clerk who's on his or her feet 10 hours a day for minimum wage? If so, the "War on Christmas" is the one in your own tortured mind and troubled heart.
Over the last couple of years, some of the more aggressive culture thugs have succeeded in bullying merchants into bullying those minimum-wage employees into issuing a dutiful "Merry Christmas" to every customer -- a perfunctory note that does nothing to affect my observance of Christmas one way or the other. If this is supposed to be some kind of signal victory for Christians, its moral and doctrinal virtue escapes me.
The most bizarre effect of this needless annual divisiveness is that two of our oldest and most time-honored salutations -- "Happy Holidays" and "Season's Greetings" -- have now, in many fearful minds, become code for some secular agnostic assault on the sanctity of Christmas. (The people in my hometown who still display these cheerful greetings every year, right next to full-size manger scenes, must be blissfully unaware of what dangerously mixed messages they're sending.)
Meanwhile, as far as I'm concerned, any genuine and sincere greeting will be welcome, be it Merry Christmas, Season's Greetings, Happy Hanukkah, Jolly Kwanzaa, Sweet Saturnalia -- whatever.
If it's something somebody's told you to say, don't bother. I'll understand.
I'll love Christmas anyway. Once again this year, I'll celebrate it with my immediate family, and our faith family, and our friends, as we do every year. We'll decorate our Christmas tree (what anybody else chooses to call theirs has no effect whatever on our lives), with Christmas music on the living room stereo and a fire in the fireplace, and on Christmas morning we'll open our gifts over cinnamon rolls and coffee.
Sometime between now and then, I hope the Ghost of Christmas Present quietly waves his torch over the heads of people in danger of having their Christmas ruined by what they see or don't see at Starbucks and Wal-Mart.
Dusty Nix, 706-571-8528; dnix@ledger-enquirer.com.
This story was originally published November 15, 2015 at 12:00 AM with the headline "We could use some of that incense about now ."