Yes Never Came

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOrBI-b5wT0

Each new year brings with it a certain kind of hope and as 2018 begins, I find myself thinking about the first few days of 2017.  Back then, I was flipping through late night TV and just happened to see a program from mega-church televangelist, Joel Olsteel.  I was very much aware of who he was but had never actually watched any of his sermons before.  He spoke about the new year and said “yes” was coming.  According to him, we would finally get the things we were yearning for if we had faith.  Doors that were closed to us for such a long time would suddenly be opened in 2017.  He sounded so positive and upbeat, I decided to hear more of what he had to say just to see how over-the-top his promises would be.

Mr. Olsteen gave the example of a woman who had applied for a dream job but had doubts she would ever be hired.  While taking a taxi, she shared her concerns with the driver who later on just happened to give a ride to the person whose job it was to hire someone for that same company.  The taxi driver put in a good word for the woman and miraculously, she was hired thanks to that chance meeting with the taxi driver.  Joel Oltseen then pondered the slim odds of such a thing happening in a big city and chalked it up to God's unseen hand.

It had me thinking about a story in my college's alumni newsletter from many years ago.  A recent graduate flying out to Los Angeles to pursue a career in the entertainment industry just happened to be seated right next to a movie producer.  The two of them started talking and discovered they both went to the same college.  By the end of the flight, the graduate was invited to work at the movie producer's company.  The article was supposed to highlight the college's networking potential but I can tell you from personal experience, such occurrences are probably very rare.

When people make promises that sound too good to be true, they only need to be right every now and then.  The alumni newsletter will never feature graduates who still struggle to find their dream jobs or who gave up looking altogether.  The Youtube video for Joel Olsteen's sermon is filled with comments praising his remarks.  They said that after watching the program, “yes” happened to them as well.  I'd be interested to know how many people yearned for “yes” in 2017 but then didn't find it.

Mr. Olsteen adds one little caveat.  We can't be negative.  In the sermon, he mentions a couple who've been trying to have a baby for years.  He says if you have the attitude that it will never happen, then “yes” won't come.  You have to believe and put your “yes” next to God's “yes” in order for miraculous things to occur.  This seems like a convenient cop out for Joel Olsteen because if any of his followers fail to get what they hoped for in the new year, he can always blame it on their weak faith.

Even though I tend to be negative, I'm still hopeful that the long-closed doors in my life will somehow open.  Guess what happened in 2017?  That “yes” Joel Olsteen said was on its way never came.  His optimistic sermon reminded me of candidate Donald Trump.  Make many uplifting promises to build up people's hopes and don't worry if they never come to pass.  According to Mr. Trump, defeating ISIS was going to be so easy and would only take months.  Tell that to recent casualties of a terrorist attack on Save the Children in Jalalabad.  Stopping a fanatical ideology won't be so easy no matter how optimistic our president is.

I've had priests say negativity leads us away from Christ but there are many times when advice in the Bible was not so uplifting.  Sell everything you own.  Cut off your hand if it causes you sin.  Be content with your pay.  Turn the other cheek.  So often, Jesus and His followers told people what they didn't want to hear.  Standing up for the truth and doing the right thing sometimes requires us to be a little negative.

The Olsteen Estate

It's spiritual pied pipers like Joel Olsteen we should be wary of.  A quick internet search reveals photos of the televangelist's sprawling mansion.  This is a far cry from the simple life John the Baptist adopted.  If it's very hard for a rich man to get into heaven, then why do so many of these televangelists fully embrace the vast material comforts of this world?

For me, it appears God did not say “yes” 2017 because many long-closed doors continue to remain closed.  Perhaps 2017 was the year He said, “Maybe.”

It's Still Christmas

The way mainstream society celebrates Christmas is pretty ridiculous.  Hype for the holiday starts as early as October and only increases in intensity as the weeks pass.  Commercials bombard you with the latest deals while radio stations play nothing but seasonal music.  Up go the holiday light displays with some neighbors trying to outdo each other.  Christmas cartoons, claymation specials and seasonal movies permeate television.  People work themselves up into a frenzy shopping for that perfect gift as advertisements remind us to cash in on those last minute savings.  We spend so much time worrying about the holiday, there's little time to savor it.

When December 25th finally arrives, many of us spend it with family and loved-ones but the next day, the Christmas music ends, the seasonal programming goes away and some decide to shut off or take down their lights just like that.  How mainstream society celebrates Christmas has me asking, "That's it?"  Retailers, unsatisfied with all the money they've made immediately promote after-Christmas sales even though they tended to avoid using the c-word before the 25th.  People go back to their old ways and with very little trace of the season left, it leaves me feeling empty.

For Catholics, the Christmas season is supposed to last until the feast of the Baptism of the Lord which falls on the Sunday following the Epiphany.  Many other denominations recognize the 12 days of Christmas.  My parents always made sure to keep the lights on through January 6th, long after my neighbors shut theirs off.  One acquaintance who isn't too religious actually leaves her Christmas lights on into February to brighten her spirits because she thinks winter is dark and dreary enough.  The new priests at my small church placed two trees, garland, banners and a large nativity scene around the altar and it really put people in the mood.  Such decorations can get out of hand but if done right, they remind us of the warmth that should be in our hearts around this time of year.

As a kid, the joy of Christmas lingered well beyond December 25th because the only other time during the year my brother and I got presents was on our birthdays.  I was grateful for these new toys and played with them on the living room floor for days.  When I visited my nieces and nephew this year they seemed to be much more savvy about gift-giving than we were.  One of the first things out of their mouths was, "Where's our presents?" To my amazement, their grandfather gave each of them a 100 dollar bill.  Using an online calculator, I adjusted that sum to see its value during my childhood years and it came out to be almost 30 dollars.  I can tell you this much, none of my relatives ever gave me anything close to that amount for Christmas.  After all the presents were opened, my nieces talked about using the money they just received to buy what they didn't get under the tree. 

For mainstream society, Christmas is one big "wham, bam, thank you ma'am" and I suspect the people who rush to take down their lights and get back to normal don't focus too much on the holiday's religious meaning.  As the first few days of January pass into time, it's a pleasant surprise to find houses with their lights still up.  While riding my bike earlier this week, I came across a lighted creche in front of someone's home.  Here was this tender scene amid the darkness and cold that surrounded me.  In that moment, it somehow made my emptiness disappear.  Imagine what Christmas would be like if we kept the kindness and warmth of the season in our hearts well beyond December 25th.

Over 6,000 And Counting

As kids, waiting for Christmas to arrive seemed like an eternity.  To help count the days, my brother and I took turns opening the little paper doors on an advent calendar that was hung in the kitchen.  Behind each door was a simple seasonal drawing but it filled us with such a sense of wonder.  The final door always revealed a depiction of the baby Jesus but our minds were too focused on opening presents to dwell on its meaning for very long.

Before going to bed on Dec. 24th, we would take one last look at the empty Christmas tree knowing our long wait was almost over.  More often than not, my brother and I would wake up around 5 AM and sneak downstairs to see all the presents that miraculously appeared under the tree.  After checking out the name tags on a few gifts, we crept back into bed eagerly awaiting the new day's dawn.  At the time, we didn't fully appreciate all that our parents did to make the holiday so very special for us.

Back then, Transformers were very popular toys and recently, I looked some of them up on the internet.  My research opened a bottomless can of worms because in addition to all the original toys we used to play with, there were limited edition models, variants from foreign markets, reissues, redesigns, and special mail order only versions that I never knew existed.  Even unnamed Transformers appearing in the 1980s cartoon for only a few seconds have been turned into toys complete with character names and backstories.  It had me wondering how many individual Transformers were out there.  I couldn't find a definitive number but a few websites said over 6,000 and counting.  Such a display of materialism made my heart sink.

Okay, now you're just making stuff up.

I may have enjoyed playing with these toys as a kid, but trying to purchase them for Christmas was a huge burden for my parents.  Between Star Wars, G.I. Joe, and Transformers, the toy companies were placing a lot of unrealistic desires into our little minds.  Do parents risk seeing disappointment in their kids' faces if a toy they ask for is left off of Santa's list?  What about all the joy they'll express when that favorite toy is under the tree?  Clearly, there's a lot of psychology that goes into the commercialization of Christmas but the bottom line is always the same:  How do we make money off the holiday?

When my mother was a child, Christmases were much more humble.  Getting an orange in your stocking was a real treat since the fruit wasn't widely available at the time.  Everyone survived not having armies of plastic action figures or the latest talking doll because they were never told they needed them in the first place.  My uncle once said, “We were poor but we never felt poor.”  Happiness or disappointment wasn't as closely tied to the buying and selling of stuff as it is now.

Yet even back then, some worried about the increasing commercialism starting to overtake the true meaning of the holiday.  Stan Freberg's Green Chri$tma$ may have been released in 1958, but its message is more relevant than ever.  Along those same lines was Ode To Christmas by local television personality Chuck Kraemer.  The feature which aired during the 1980s on WCVB was a lengthy list of brand names and products creatively strung together but ending with the question, “Good Lord.  What have we done to Christmas?”

A song so accurate, it was banned for many years.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZ44t3UDjGs

If it wasn't for A Charlie Brown Christmas, I don't think I'd hear mainstream society utter one word about the holiday's true meaning.  The season is filled with news reports about shopping and that “must have” gadget of the year.  There's the obligatory interview with a shopping mall representative and when sales are down, headlines decry the “retail woes” plaguing the country.  If Charlie Brown was trying to warn us about the commercialization of Christmas, I don't think many people got the message.  Now we see larger and larger holiday light displays that have nothing to do with Jesus.  Good grief!

Oh, no.  My own neighbor gone commercial.  (There's even an inflatable Snoopy at far left)

As Christians we are told to travel light because possessions have a tendency to weigh our souls down especially if we let things get out of hand.  A few people are actually trying to acquire all 6,000+ Transformers and their collections take up entire rooms.  I look at the two boxes of Transformers that are stored in my basement and feel manipulated.  When Hasbro wanted to sell us a whole new line of Transformers, they decided to kill off many beloved older characters in 1986's The Transformers: The Movie.  The film's unexpected violence upset a lot children including me and I stopped collecting the toys shortly thereafter.  If they had no qualms about shattering a kid's fantasy world, what else didn't they care about?

It's odd living in a society where the economy would collapse if everyone started celebrating Christmas in humble but meaningful ways.  Christ's teachings don't sell 6,000+ Transformers but if we are to untangle commercialism from the true meaning of the holiday, then maybe we should ask ourselves if all these material possessions give us lasting happiness.  Today's much desired Christmas gifts just might end up as long-forgotten clutter in your basement.