A good idea? If malls are going to make money (and save the economy?) out of merchandising Christmas they ought at least to acknowledge what Christmas really is. Although one could argue the other way (as some do about marriage) that the definition of Christmas has been changed by the merchandising and no longer means what it used to mean.
Except that some of us want to keep the old version in the public gaze because the original meaning is much more meaningful than the revised version. In fact one of Jesus’ closest friends thought that the world of sensual and visual desire, and the pride in wealth was passing away. It did pass away, but it keeps cropping up like a weed, and like a weed it passes away again (are you following the Euro finance debacle?).
What doesn’t pass away is the person who does the will of God, according to John. They live forever. And they live forever because they believe that the Father sent his Son as the saviour of the world. That the one who came, Jesus Christ, really came from the Father, and was really the child of Mary.
Putting up displays of manger scenes in shopping malls may be a way of enticing people into the merchandising temple and making them feel better about it. But it may also be subversive of it. In the heart of the temples it points to a contrary way of life. A life given in full by the one who came from God.
Dale