I feel it is incumbent upon me, as I write these words within a week of Thanksgiving, to wish you a Happy Valentine’s Day. I know that some of you may think it rather early to be turning to Valentine’s Day—it is three months away. However, in view of the fact that a certain number of retailers have moved up the kick-off of the Christmas shopping season to Thanksgiving night, I am thinking that if I don’t get an early start on Valentine’s Day, I might be considered slothful in my well-wishing.
It seems like only a few years ago—actually, it was only a few years ago—that post-Thanksgiving Christmas shopping started at 9am the Friday after Thanksgiving. Then someone got it in their heads that they could create a greater rush of customers by starting the shopping season first thing in the morning on Black Friday—7am or, even earlier, 6am. Some retailers who had not anticipated this turn of events soon enough decided that for the next year they would catch their competitors “unawares” by starting at 5am or, even earlier, 4am. Of course, with such an early start, many customers realized that there wasn’t a good reason to go to bed at all, especially with the felt need to arrive early to get a good place in line. With doors opening at 4am, getting through the doors at 4:05am would undoubtedly mean that the best bargains would already be gone.
Such thinking, however, paved the way for the next logical deduction: if no one is going to bed anyway, why not open at midnight. What a terrific idea. But before the novelty of such an idea could wear off, some bright-eyed up-and-comer decided that to get a jump on the competition, the stores could actually open ON Thanksgiving Day night. The obvious problem with opening at night, however, is that the effects of gorging ourselves on turkey and stuffing will mean that many of the best customers will be fighting overwhelming lethargy and heavy eye-lids. So, some have decided to move the post-Thanksgiving Christmas shopping to the middle of Thanksgiving Day.
Honestly, in a consumerist culture, it is not too surprising that the holiday supposedly set apart to give thanks for all that we have should become supplanted by a seemingly more significant “holy” day set aside for buying all the things we do not have yet. And we do all of this why? Oh yeah, because Jesus is the reason for the season. Really?
Forgive me if I am coming across as a little bit cynical this holiday season. But it seems to me that our culture’s desire to use Thanksgiving Day to add one more shopping day before Christmas is a stark example of the words the Apostle Paul records in Romans 1:25, “They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.”
Our exchanging Thanksgiving, a day set aside to thank our Creator, for yet one more shopping day, seems to me a powerful picture of exchanging the truth of God for a lie by worshipping and serving created things rather than the Creator! We need Thanksgiving. We need this one day a year set aside as a holy day to acknowledge that “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows” (James 1:17). And our need to give thanks to God is inestimably greater than our need to get a jump-start on the Christmas shopping season, even if the Black Friday deals seem too good to pass up.
I have an idea. Rather than seeing Thanksgiving Day as the beginning of the Christmas shopping season, let’s view it as the perfect way to begin to prepare our hearts for the greatest reason to give thanks: that God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son. Let Thanksgiving be our reminder of what the advent season is all about, the celebration of the coming of the newborn King. Let Thanksgiving be a reminder to us of what Christmas is really all about, the birth of our Savior!
O come let us adore Him,
O come let us adore Him,
O come let us adore Him, Christ the Lord!
In Christ, Pastor Dan