Speaking of Christmas...

We all know that Christmas comes a little earlier every year. It's not just that it feels like it gets here sooner, like the years go by faster as we get older, but it's that everything about Christmas actually gets here a little earlier every year. The songs on the radio begin sooner, the products in the stores get set out earlier, and the lights on houses get hung quicker.

So much of the time we think of this as simply the retail industry trying to make more money, or overanxious Holiday fans who just can't get enough of the season and all of its glamor. But perhaps it is something more...

We all know that these are difficult times in which we live. Christ has been methodically taken out of our lives. From exclusion of prayer in schools, to lawsuits against crosses on hillsides, religion is now thought of as something for Sunday only, and not something to be incorporated into our everyday lives. And it's even a stretch for many people to believe in religion at all.

Naturally, these are confusing times. Things that once were never questioned as being a certain way, such as that marriage is between a man and a woman, or that the woman goes through a pregnancy and delivers a baby - not the man, are now the nucleus of protest. What is right and what is wrong? Not many people know anymore. Collectively we are in darkness. Whether or not we all realize it does not change that fact. And this brings me to the point of this essay - my hypothesis on why Christmas seems to get here sooner each year.

We all long for hope and peace, and even as commercialized as Christmas has become, it still brings us exactly that - a sense of hope and peace. So, even as humanity has taken Christ out of our schools, our governments, and our hillsides, it has (consciously or subconsciously) reached out for Christ. It has reached out by playing Christmas songs a little sooner on the radio; by setting out products a little earlier in the stores; and by hanging lights a little quicker on the eaves and window frames of houses in your neighborhood and mine. And as times become more confusing, humankind will continue to pursue peace and hope, and it will continue to do it earlier and earlier, where it knows it can always find it - Christmas.