Drip by drip. I've noticed lately that there has been much ado about a certain coffee shop's cups. The elephant in the room is that although the cups are traditional Christmas colors now, they are missing the words Merry Christmas. Now, I think it is interesting how Christians are reacting to this. One pastor has suggested offering your name as Merry Christmas to your barista. That way they have to write the words on the red cup. Pretty stealthy if I do say so myself. The other, more popular reaction seems to be, "What does it matter? It's just a cup. We know the true meaning of Christmas." After giving this some thought, I'm not so sure this is the right attitude. What this coffee shop, along with many others have done, is created a faux Christmas. In an effort not to offend they have offended. Growing up in the 60's Christmas was an integral part of Americana. Everywhere you turned in the month of December, Christmas was proudly displayed. The words "Merry Christmas" were heard
regularly. When I began my teaching career in the late 70's we embraced the secular side of
Christmas, and left the birth of Christ for Sunday School. Bit by bit, in our attempts to never make
someone feel uneasy, we have removed Christmas from our culture. We have replaced it with some
sort of "Holiday of Your Choosing." I think it does matter that Merry Christmas has been left off that cup. Any color could have been chosen, but they chose a traditional Christmas color, and thumbed their noses at us that they would not acknowledge the traditional holiday. Now what you do with this is up to you. Maybe it doesn't matter and you may think it's "much ado about nothing." But drip by drip, everytime we stop paying attention and let another tradition go by, we might just be surprised when it all becomes a distant memory of an America we no longer know.
regularly. When I began my teaching career in the late 70's we embraced the secular side of
Christmas, and left the birth of Christ for Sunday School. Bit by bit, in our attempts to never make
someone feel uneasy, we have removed Christmas from our culture. We have replaced it with some
sort of "Holiday of Your Choosing." I think it does matter that Merry Christmas has been left off that cup. Any color could have been chosen, but they chose a traditional Christmas color, and thumbed their noses at us that they would not acknowledge the traditional holiday. Now what you do with this is up to you. Maybe it doesn't matter and you may think it's "much ado about nothing." But drip by drip, everytime we stop paying attention and let another tradition go by, we might just be surprised when it all becomes a distant memory of an America we no longer know.
I know, I see it. When I teach piano I long for all my students to love the song "Oh Come All Ye Faithful", and others that speak of Christ. Most of my students do not have any feeling for Jesus. How did we come to that?
ReplyDeleteI think we just stopped paying attention.
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