Recent polls reveal that a huge percentage of Americans will be spending less this Christmas, and more Americans than ever are choosing not to celebrate Christmas at all. Is this the beginning of the end for "the Big American Christmas"?A recent gallup poll found that a record-high 35% of Americans say they will spend less on Christmas gifts in 2008 compared with what they spent in 2007.
The same poll found that only 9% of Americans plan to spend more.
An unscientific CNN poll on November 11, 2008, found that a whopping 45% of Americans said they would not be doing any Christmas shopping this year. With all of the job losses, home foreclosures and credit card defaults, it is not a surprise that Americans do not have much money for Christmas this year.
Should it surprise us that more Americans than ever are rejecting big Christmas spending? After all, the new president of the United States, Barack Obama, does not give Christmas presents to his children.
With record numbers of Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and Jews living in the United States now, a smaller percentage of Americans are celebrating Christmas than ever before. Alternative celebrations such as Kwanzaa are becoming increasingly popular.
Those who are not religious at all are either attacking the holiday or are trying to incorporate a "non-religious" version of Christmas into their lives.
One enterprising greeting card company has actually unveiled "atheist Christmas cards" for the 2008 holiday season.
Others are not afraid to make a full frontal assault on Christmas. Controversial new ads that state, "Why believe in a god? Just be good for goodness' sake" will be appearing on Washington D.C. buses through the end of December. These provocative advertisements are being paid for by the American Humanist Association, and they are spending forty thousand dollars to get their point across.
Some religious groups seemed determined to do their very best to keep fighting for Christmas. Several Christian groups have launched a campaign to boycott retailers who ban "Christmas" references from their holiday advertising.
However, other Christian groups are rejecting Christmas for spiritual reasons. The word "Christmas" is actually not in the Bible, they point out, and Jesus was not born on December 25th.
These Christian groups argue that December 25th was celebrated as a pagan religious holiday long before Jesus ever came to earth, and therefore the celebration of December 25th along with all of the pagan traditions and rituals that have come down to us need to be rejected as well:
2 comments:
wait a minute, are you implying that spending less at christmas is a contributing factor to the moral decline of america?
LOL, no that is not what we are saying.
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