The Real Threat to Christmas That Fox News Is Blind to: The Religion of Shopping

From AlterNet:

And now that the nation enters its Christmas shopping spree — conveniently begun in November, to allow plenty of time for the practice — there will undoubtedly be lots more commodity fetishism. The shopping malls are already alive with the Christmas music designed to encourage purchases, while visions of rising sales figures dance through the heads of happy store managers.

All of this, of course, leads to complaints by traditional religious believers about the commercialization of Christmas. Of course, the bloviators on Fox News seek to blame the decline of religious feeling during the Christmas season upon liberal thought. But the hard reality is that Jesus in the manger or bleeding on the cross has less appeal to many Americans that do the latest cellphones and other commercial gadgetry.

Actually, despite the emphasis on purchases during the holidays, shopping is a year-round phenomenon in the United States. Children might not be able to read, write, add, or subtract, but they know a great deal about the latest consumer products.

More here.

I've been hearing for many years now from certain sectors of society that America is a Christian nation.  But I just don't see it.  I mean, sure, I certainly take note of all the assertions, all the commentary about the Pilgrims, all the "in God we trust," all the "one nation under God" without a pause between "one nation" and "under God," but I rarely observe behavior that I would describe as Christlike.  Indeed, I often see the opposite.  So much so that I would assert that America's real religion is consumerism, or, if you want to get Biblical, Mammon.  

Seriously.  Every television commercial is a mini-sermon on the values of materialism and consumption.  Every advertisement, a reminder of who we are and what we are supposed to do.  Every celebrity strutting around in the media with their conspicuous consumption exposed like a bead-whore on Fat Tuesday, an apostle for our lord Mammon.  Every shopping mall, a seminary.  Every Walmart, a mega-church.  Every purchase, a nibble on the communion wafer, a sip of the sacramental wine.

And Christmas is the holiest day of the year.  Not because Jesus was born, but because it is the climactic culmination of all that stuff-buying.

Yeah, they say we're a Christian nation, and some of us even go to church.  But ALL of us shop.  Shop 'til we drop.  Shop or die.  That's what we're REALLY about: buying stuff, stuff we don't need, or really even want that much, just so that we can buy stuff, and for no other reason.  This nation worships the great god Mammon, and only pretends to follow Jesus.  Why don't the TV preachers and self-righteous Fox News pundits ever talk about this?

No doubt because they worship Mammon, too.

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