Jingling all the way from Jack-O-Lanterns to Valentine's Hearts

If you didn't get around to purchasing some harvest type of decorations for your Thanksgiving celebration you have little choice now but to hope there are a few remaining in the bargain bin at the store.  Why?  Because once Halloween was over the stores moved right into full Christmas mode, one that has been present and gradually increasing since Labor Day!  For us as people of faith this becomes a tempting time of year to fall into the trap of a Christmas defined   mainly by commercial interests rather than a truly traditional religious one.  In order to boost profits retailers feel they must push Christmas at every opportunity and a cultural version of it so that all people, even those who do not believe in Jesus Christ, can observe it as consumers at least.   It is to their best interest that Christmas start now and be marketed mainly as a time of gift giving so that people prepare for it by shopping until they drop on Black Fridays and Cyber Mondays and every day until December 24th.
 
For Christians the Christmas season does not begin after Halloween or even the day after Thanksgiving but rather Christmas begins on the evening of the 24th of December and it should continue this year until January 9th, the Feast of the Lord's Baptism.   If we go with the flow and start observing it only as a single holiday preceded by a shopping season we will be quite tired of it by the time it arrives and so we will end up ending it before it is truly over.    We will also miss the full observance of Advent, a rather short but very important first season of the church year, one that for its first three weeks is focused primarily on our preparedness for the Second Coming of Christ.  Advent does not turn its full attention to preparation for the first coming of Christ at Christmas until the 17th of December and so neither should we!  So let us not get caught up in the decorations we see at the shopping malls or the Christmas music that is playing in the background, these will all but completely disappear on December 26th as the "after Christmas" sales begin. Ironically, this is when we as people of faith who are trying to keep Christ in Christmas should have only   just begun to light the lights on our trees and houses and listen to the carols play, but as we do so we must prepare ourselves that we are very likely to be surrounded by valentine hearts should we visit the stores! Let us plan now to celebrate the real Christmas in accord with our Christian tradition as a season of the Church Year which begins with the Solemnity of the Nativity of the Lord (Dec. 25th), continues with the Feast of the Holy Family (Dec. 30th), the Solemnity of Mary the Mother Of God (Jan.1st), the Epiphany of the Lord (Jan. 8th) and concludes with The Baptism of the Lord (Jan.9th).