Silent Night?

This season has the ability to bring out the best in us, and the worst. Our family has done Christmas shopping at Omaha’s Westroads Mall, and so I can vaguely identify with the horror that took place there yesterday. It recalled a young parishioner in the church I served there who was certifiably pathological, but a misguided and erroneous conception of what is “Christian” thwarted my efforts to get the professional help that was so obviously needed. Fortunately, to the best of my knowledge, that person never went berserk—an argument for the grace of God. As we ask ourselves what goes on in the mind of a perpetrator of massacre, I suggest that we ultimately end up asking what goes on in our own minds, as well. How has the commercial aspect of Christmas become so ingrained in our society that the national economy is directly tied to our level of consumerism? Why are we so enamored by the quest for more that we literally let those in desperate need of our attention fall through the cracks? Just what are we celebrating, anyway? In my opinion, we will do well to focus less on outspending one another and more upon the image of the love borne of a mother, a father, and a child. Mary and Joseph deserve some of the credit for raising a child that didn’t have to seek celebrity through violence and destruction, and therein may lay the true meaning of Christmas.