Almost 7 years ago to this date, I wrote the following in a blog on another site:

Step into any commercial establishment right now and the transition to “Christmas WonderLand” has already happened or is in the process of taking place. With the exception of grocery and craft/decorating stores, who stand to benefit from the effort to promote it, Thanksgiving is nothing but a blip on the radar screen of economic indicators. This is not a new phenomenon–I have a vague recollection of one of my elementary school teachers talking about this many, many years ago.

Anyway, I felt as though SOMEBODY should say SOMETHING about Thanksgiving–not the turkey-with-all-the-trimmings part but the part where we are given a chance to express our gratitude. The only flaw in this plan is that I find talking about expressing gratitude is a skill which I find myself lacking almost as much as expressing the gratitude itself. This means I will have to call on Fredrick Buechner for some assistance:

“Some think of a Christian as one who necessarily believes certain things. That Jesus was the son of God, say. Or that Mary was a virgin. Or that the Pope is infallible. Or that all other religions are wrong.
Some think of a Christian as one who necessarily does certain things. Such as going to church. Getting baptized. Giving up liquor and tobacco. Reading the Bible. Doing a good deed a day.
Some think of a Christian as just a Nice Guy.
Jesus said, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by me.’(John 14:6) He didn’t say that any particular ethic, doctrine, or religion was the way, the truth, and the life. He said that he was. He didn’t say that by believing or doing anything in particular that you could ‘come to the Father.’ He said that is was only by him–by living, participating in, being caught up by, the way of life that he embodied, that was his way.
Thus it is possible to be on Christ’s way and with his mark upon you without ever having heard of Christ, and for that reason to be on your way to God though maybe you don’t even believe in God.
A Christian is one who is on the way, though not necessarily very far along it, and who has at least some dim and half-baked idea of whom to thank.”

Thank, you Freddie! To me, this is as much or more of a message of hope than the Christmas story….

All these years later, I find myself having to struggle even harder to keep from getting sucked into the Massive Holiday Consumption Machine since I am now myself in the retail biz. I am very thankful to the guest minister who used these very words by Buechner in his sermon yesterday to remind me and I thought I would share those words of hope with everyone in XangaLand today. Enjoy!