In his latest On the Square column , Russell E. Saltzman says we should call it Christ’s Mass and let Best Buy keep the holiday:
Who cares, first, if Best Buy or Gap “keeps” Christmas as a feature of their annual sales hustle? Hearing What Child is This? dispensed from overhead Muzak speakers as shoppers sort through Black Friday discards isn’t exactly the proclamatory moment St. Luke may have had in mind when he wrote his gospel.
Besides, the Christian proclamation of Christmas doesn’t belong to Gap, but to the Church of Christ. The culture may yet be residually Christian in some respects, but that hardly matters when it’s time to go shopping.
