Sunday, October 30, 2011
Despite much political debate, Christmas still will be on Dec. 25 this year.
Moving the celebration to another date this year had been the subject of heated discussion occurring in many townships, city councils and statehouses.
The problem: Dec. 25 inconveniently falls on a Sunday this year.
Sunday also is the most popular day for church attendance across most denominations — even for the new-fangled churches with rock bands and ministers dressed for a golf scramble.
The dedication to Sunday is such that youth sports, charitable fundraisers, even the breakfast crew at C’s Waffles in Struthers schedule their lives around our devotions.
Six other days of the week, anything in life is workable and flexible — such as school hours. Parents these days don’t flinch to pluck a kid out of school for a deer hunt, a family trip or a great sale at Dillard’s.
But don’t mess with Sundays.
When Christmas Day arrives every year, all that is good, fulfilling and obligatory about Sunday church service also happens Dec. 25.
Sunday services also are the day of stewardship and tithing — where we open our wallets to our Gods. Christmas services are equally lucrative. On years when Christmas is on a day other than Sunday, that stewardship and tithing happens twice. It’s God’s double dip.
But when Dec. 25 happens on a Sunday, such as this year, there’s no Christmas bonus.
So townships, city councils and statehouses got organized.
The proposal was to schedule Christmas not on Dec. 25, but on a day that is more convenient.
Why should it seem so far-fetched?
Their motivation was how simple they’ve made Halloween for us.
Remember how horrible Halloween used to be?
It was always on Oct. 31 and you had to laboriously plan around that single day for 51 weeks and six days. What a burden.
Those were the days when kids came to your door only one night a week, and not the variety of two or three because they get confused when your town celebrates it.
And it was also when you could not double up your child’s sugar take by taking them to your friend’s house next town over.
With the old, confining way of Halloween, you did not get to engage your newspaper looking for its list of Halloween days and times and towns.
And remember how burdensome flexibility was back then as to when you showed up at someone’s house?
You could show up at some homes at 4:30, and it was OK. And sometimes, it was OK to get to a home at 7:45 p.m.
You didn’t have to worry about “after 5 p.m.” and “before 7 p.m.”
Or was it 5:30 p.m. and 7:30 p.m.?
Or is that what it is in Struthers on Sunday?
Or is that Poland on Monday?
With this kind of consistency, why would we not want to also adjust Christmas Sunday?
Todd Franko is editor of The Vindicator. He likes emails about stories and our newspaper. Email him at tfranko@vindy.com. He blogs, too, on vindy.com.