The Seduction of Human Longing.

John O’Donohue writes that many of the powerful forces of contemporary culture work to “seduce human longing along the pathways of false satisfaction”:

Consumerism is a perversion of our longing… cluttering our lives with things we do not need… and reducing everything to its common denominator… Consumerism leaves us marooned in a cup-de-sac of demented longing, helpless targets of its relentless multiplication.

This has the effect of intensifying “our sense of isolation and distance that so many now feel”:

Consumerism is the worship of the god of quantity; advertising is its liturgy. Advertising is schooling in false longing… it is a famine field of the Spirit.

It is in this famine field of what Christmas has become that we find ourselves being beckoned to the One who made us for Himself. We are invited to become aware of the revelation of the One whose Christmas story is good news.

The more you consume the less you live

In reaction to consumerism, “Adbusters” promotes “abillionpeople.org” (Caution: language). George Monbiot writes the following provocative piece in time for “Xmas.”

“The more trivial, vulgar and banal holidays become, the more acutely one senses the approach of something uncanny and terrifying: the more you consume the less you live.

As we enter the crazy holiday shopping season, keep in mind that buying stuff will never make you happy. It might lift your spirits for a few hours, or if you’re lucky, maybe a day or two, but in the end (and we mean the real end) your connections, your friends, your family, and your human experiences are all you’ve really got and all that really matters.

So this year, at this moment in history when the existential threat of climate change is breathing down our necks, why not try something radically different:

#BuyNothingXmas

Join the worldwide movement of people determined to take back Christmas from the corpo-commercial forces that have hijacked it. Get your family together and decide to do things differently this year . . . instead of buying useless things to give to your family and friends, why not:

Bake them a cake, write them a poem, give them a kiss, tell them a joke, but for god’s sake stop thrashing the planet to tell someone you care.”  

George Monbiot

A Prophetic Outcry at Christmas

I am fascinated that a non-Christian organization like Adbusters is speaking prophetically against the anti-Christian “corpo-comercial forces that have hijacked Christmas”. How is it they join the faithful who know that consuming is not the centre of Christmas?

This Christmas, do all you can to reveal Christ in your life and sphere of influence – for Jesus is the centre and circumference of the Spiritual life.

This is more enigma than dogma.

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Merry Christmas