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Long Live Commercialism This Christmas!
by Michael J. Hurd
(December 11, 2004)
I hate it when people say Christmas is too "materialistic." I hate it even more when people complain, "We have forgotten the real meaning of Christmas, with all these gifts and all this shopping and all this commercialism."
On the contrary, the production of gifts and material things is what a glorious holiday should be all about. Productivity and capitalism and materialism and, most of all, the celebration of life on earth -- of happiness in this life -- is the essence of Christmas for me ... and for a lot of you out there. The only difference between you and I is that I will acknowledge it, and most of you won't. In all fairness, nobody ever taught you to do so. I am teaching you now.
Move past the shock and outrage over what I am writing, if that is what you feel. Don't feel guilty. Shop and give and receive and relish the materialism of our times. How wonderful that we have it, and how sad that we don't yet have more of it.
Look at the people of Afghanistan and Iraq and Iran. Look at the late leader of the PLO and his cronies. Look at what's left of al Qaeda and the Taliban. Do you think any of them are materialistic enough to purchase a bar of soap, much less exchange expensive gifts? Their countries are pathetic, anti-materialistic disasters. Is this what you want, for yourself or your children? Of course not! Then stop being a hypocrite, and spread the ideas and sentiments I am now voicing. These ideas are already implicit in your actions and emotions. It's time to make them conscious and whole.
The war against terrorism is not merely a military defense of the United States. It is a defense of the ideas and values that make our unprecedented material comforts possible. Americans are quite literally attacked for being too "materialistic" and too capitalistic and too "of-this-world." Well, are you going to fight back or not? If ever there was a time to shop and spend and gleefully indulge in material existence, this is it. Let's fight the war against secular happiness on earth with twice the secularism of years past.
Merry Christmas!
Dr. Michael Hurd is a psychotherapist, life coach and author of Effective Therapy (New York: Dunhill, 1997) and Grow Up America! Visit his website at: www.DrHurd.com.
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