Shopping for the essence of Christmas

MICHELE MARR

On Saturday, the day before the first Sunday in Advent, as I opened

my e-mail, I came across a message from an Internet acquaintance in

Cancun. The subject line, “The Essence of the Christmas Season,”

caught my eye.

When I opened the message, I found an Internet link to a story

from The Associated Press, which had appeared in the New York Times

under the headline, “Shopper Is Knocked Unconscious as Sale Begins.”

The story, from Orange City, Fla., was about a woman, Patricia

VanLester, who was trampled and knocked unconscious by a frenzied mob

of shoppers during a 6 a.m. Friday, Wal-Mart Supercenter,

post-Thanksgiving five-hour blitz sale of DVD players for $29.

VanLester was pushed to the ground and, according to her sister,

Linda Ellzey, the crowd “walked over her like a herd of elephants.”

A Wal-Mart employee and a few shoppers tried to help Ellzey rescue

her sister as most of the shoppers continued to dash to secure a DVD

player. But paramedics called to the scene found VanLester

unconscious on the floor on top of a DVD player.

She was hospitalized for the weekend and Wal-Mart, which enjoyed a

single-day company sales record of $1.52 billion during its

day-after- Thanksgiving sales, offered to hold a $29 DVD player for

her.

I hope they also held players for Ellzey and the other shoppers

who set aside their own desires for a DVD player while trying to aid

VanLester.

The Orange City, Fla. story made international news. It can be

read in several languages on the Internet where it became a hot topic

of discussion in many online forums.

In England the story ran under the headline, “Woman crushed in

rush at DVD sale,” and concludes, “The day after Thanksgiving -- the

last Thursday of November -- is traditionally the beginning of the

Christmas season in the US.”

On the first Sunday in Advent, the Associated Press story ran on

page A35 in the Los Angeles Times, good fodder perhaps for Jay Leno

or David Letterman or my cynical Internet acquaintance in Cancun, but

hardly “the essence of the Christmas season.”

The season of Christmas that begins on the day after Thanksgiving

is a commercial melee that runs from the day after Thanksgiving until

the day before Christmas, racking up roughly 40 percent of retail

sales for the fiscal year.

It’s a season focused on “what I want” and “what will I get?”

More and more each year, this so-called Christmas season manages

to obscure -- but not change -- the true essence of the Christmas

season, which begins on Christmas Eve and ends on Jan. 6 with

Epiphany, which recalls the three kings recognition of the newborn

Jesus as the long-anticipated King of kings.

The days between the day after Thanksgiving and Christmas are part

of the season of Advent, a season of preparation, expectancy and

hope.

It not only remembers the birth of Jesus, who Christians believe

is the savior God long promised the world, but also eagerly looks

forward to Christ’s second coming when he will reign as the King of

kings in a world in which he makes “all things new” -- a world where

“God shall wipe away all tears ... and there shall be no more death,

neither sorrow, nor crying [and] neither shall there be any more

pain” (Rev. 21:5).

The world’s longing for the savior is remembered in Advent hymns

like “O come, O come Emmanuel,” and Charles Wesley’s ‘Come, thou long

expected Jesus:”

Come, thou long-expected Jesus,

Born to set thy people free;

From our fears and sins release us,

Let us find our rest in thee.

While the Second Coming of Christ is foreseen in Advent hymns

like, “The King shall come when morning dawns:”

Not, as of old, a little child,

To bear, and fight, and die,

But crowned with glory like the sun

That lights the morning sky.

And let the endless bliss begin,

By weary saints foretold,

When right shall triumph over wrong,

And truth shall be extolled.

For those who celebrate the holy season of Christmas, its essence

is this: “God did not send His Son [Jesus Christ] into the world to

condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved”

(John 3:17).

“Christmas” sales might overshadow it but for those who embrace

it, they’ll never diminish it. It has, in essence, a much longer

shelf life than a $29 DVD player.

* MICHELE MARR is a freelance writer from Huntington Beach. She

can be reached at [email protected].