Quick!  Pop Quiz: What’s the moral of Dr. Seuss’s famous 1957 book, How the Grinch Stole Christmas?

(a) Christmas isn’t Christmas without cute little girls with strange hairdos.
(b) Christmas isn’t Christmas without garlands, presents, and roast beast.
(c) Christmas isn’t Christmas without a good ol’ sing-along in the town square.
(d) None of the above.

Of course, Dear Saint Geisel is no longer with us to clarify his intent as author.  (Not that that ever keeps anyone from guessing.  Just look at biblical studies.)  And even if he were, I wouldn’t pretend that Dr. Seuss (or, for that matter, anyone) could really put a finger on “the true meaning” of this erstwhile-spiritual holiday.

But that won’t stop me from climbing on my annual soapbox.  

When I was serving as music minister in Christian churches, I heard any number of people, swept up in some kind of sentimental and/or retail-driven furor, make demands of the worship programming for Advent & Christmas:

• “We never sing enough Christmas carols.”
• “What do you mean, ‘We Three Kings’ is an Epiphany carol?  What the heck is Epiphany?”
• “No, not that tune for ‘Away in a Manger.’  The good one!”
• “It’s not Christmas unless we light candles, turn out the lights, and sing ‘Silent Night.’  (All four verses.  Plus the German.)”

It didn’t take many Christmases of trying to reconcile every layperson’s (and several pastors’) ideas of what a “real Christmas” should look like, before I threw it all out.  Bathwater and swaddling-clad baby went tumbling, and I decided to dig in my heels and hate Christmas.  I fought it in churches for years—even preaching several wildly heretical (but intriguingly popular) anti-Christmas sermons.  But I didn’t ruffle any real feathers until I hid my Amazon wish list and told everyone I didn’t want any presents for Christmas.

One friend practically cried when I told her.  “What do you mean?  Couldn’t I just get you X, or Y, or maybe even Z?  It’s not about the money—I don’t expect anything in return,” she all but whined.

I agreed with her, at least, on one point.

It’s not about the money.  But I’m also not willing to subscribe to the allegedly non-materialistic alternative so many offer—that it’s “the thought that counts”—especially when the price of a greeting card and wrapping paper to accompany “the thought” could feed a family of four in many third-world countries.

If we really do intend to “keep Christ in Christmas,” then this holiday needs to be not about material tokens and sentimental traditions, but about Christ.  And whether Christ for you is a singular historical individual who walked on earth two millenia ago, or a literary & religious symbol for the Divinity incarnate in every human soul, it’s hard for me to see how “Black Friday,” holiday shopping, and expensive greeting cards do anything to honor the message we see embodied in the scriptural Jesus stories.

“And the Grinch, with his grinch-feet ice-cold in the snow,
stood puzzling and puzzling: ‘How could it be so?
It came without ribbons!  It came without tags!
It came without packages, boxes, or bags!’
And he puzzled three hours, ‘til his puzzler was sore.
Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn’t before.
‘Maybe Christmas,’ he thought, ‘doesn’t come from a store!
Maybe Christmas… perhaps… means a little bit more!’”

Last year, flat on my back with the flu and pneumonia for most of December and January, I asked my sister for a reprieve from Christmas shopping, and suggested the two of us might make a date to go shopping together after I’d recovered.  By the time our schedules coincided, it was a warm day in June, about as un-Christmas-like as we could have found.  I don’t remember what we bought—that wasn’t really the point anyway—but I do remember really, really enjoying spending focused time with someone I love.

It was the best Christmas ever.

*They actually do, or rather did–”Grinch” was my nickname in college, but I acquired it not by climbing a yuletide soapbox, but by smirking, which someone said made me look like the Dr. Seuss character.