In 1965 Charles Schultz created an animated television special, A Charlie Brown Christmas. As Charlie Brown complains about the materialism that had become the Christmas season, Linus drags his blanket out to the middle of a stage and recites the Christmas story from the Gospel of Luke (this was a public school play, not a Christmas Pageant at church).

“For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you; You shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.”

1965.

My mother was 29 years old. I was 5. My mother had been born during the Great Depression. I asked her once what the Great Depression was like.

“Don’t know.” she said. “When you’re poor, and you don’t have shoes before the depression, and you don’t have shoes after the depression, what’s the difference?”

A Charlie Brown Christmas expressed the sentiments of my mother’s generation. She remembered a time when Christmas abundance was special. It was the one time in a year when a child’s indulgent dream could become reality for just one day. By 1965 the great post-war economic expansion drove consumption in America. Consumption was becoming a way of life.

Now I am 47 years old and A Charlie Brown Christmas has been playing on TV for 42 years.

Bemoaning the materialization of Christmas has become a part of Christmas itself. Who doesn’t complain about Christmas music playing in the department stores in November?

The “real meaning” of Christmas died a long time ago. Charles Schultz documented its passing.

I stopped advocating for the “real meaning” of Christmas a long time ago. The truth is the "real meaning" of Christmas is whatever one’s experience of it might be.

We will welcome a number of friends of the parish at our Christmas Eve service. For some, Christmas includes participating in a church, any church. Nothing wrong with that.

For some, Christmas will pass as just another day on the calendar, with little more significance than say, Columbus Day. Nothing wrong with that, I suppose.

Others will be especially lonely on Christmas Day, having few friends and perhaps no family nearby. Sad.

For people of an informed faith, well, Christmas holds a certain significance that is lost on many:
The Lord of Creation enters creation to show us how to love. This is all Linus was trying to say way back in 1965.

Don't really want to argue about it. It remains a sacred hope for some, a fairytale for many.

Whatever the real meaning of Christmas may be for you, may it be a merry one.