(Flickr/DM)
I’m Dan Irvin.
I’d like to be single-minded about the holidays. But, there’s so much going on it seems.
Sports never take a vacation. When’s the last time Illinois State football had such a huge share of mind? What a nice early present we’ve been given from Coach Spack and his charges.
Conversely, did you see how empty Soldier Field was on Sunday? When’s the last time that was the case for a Bears game?
A friend of mine pointed out that very empty stands are the norm these days for high school basketball. Next time you’ve managed to make it all the way to the sports part of a 10:00 TV news show, note the empty bleachers during the high school game highlights. I guess back in the old days, we just didn’t have anything else to do. I expect most of the people at the games these days are looking at their phones anyway.
There’s a ubiquitous TV commercial campaign now that features toys that gen-Xers got for Christmas when they were kids. Only the campaign is afraid to use the word Christmas, so the toys say to the viewer “Remember when you got me for the holidays?” and it just sounds funny to me, because people don’t really give holiday presents. They give Kwanza or Chanukah, or Christmas, or some other sort of presents but not a present “for the holidays.” There’s a beer commercial that says, “It was the night before.” And that’s it. We’re not told the night before what.
Madison Avenue has become paralyzed in the belief that simply mentioning the word “Christmas” will set off a spate of economic terrorism that will devastate their clients. Take this fear to its logical extension, and you get a world where you can scuttle a multi-million dollar movie release by sending a threatening email.
It seems to me that true celebration of our society’s diversity should involve active inclusion, and not simply lamely attempting to avoid exclusion by inserting transparent code-words like “holidays.”
Anyway….I hope your celebrations over this week or so fill you with spirituality and peace….And because it is our tradition, from my family to yours, Merry Christmas.
This is Dan Irvin, on WJBC’s forum.
Dan Irvin is Secretary of the Board of the McLean County Chamber of Commerce, Vice-President of the Bloomington Public Library Foundation Board, and a member of the Heartland Community College Foundation Board.
The opinions expressed within WJBC’s Forum are solely those of the Forum’s author, and are not necessarily those of WJBC or Cumulus Media, Inc.
