It’s about this time every year that I get full use of the ability to roll my eyes that I perfected between the ages of 13 and yesterday. Much to the delight of my mom, no scenario was immune to the eye-rolling… birthday morning wake up calls, church gossip conversations at family events, conversations about the lack of girlfriend in my life… Needless to say, there were/are many opportunities to practice the perfect sarcastic non-verbal response championed by teenagers everywhere, and the next month just happens to be the height of eye roll opportunities.

Usually about a week or two after major retailers begin displaying their pumpkins and ghoulish costumes for the Halloween holiday, a sinister mid-level corporate manager sends memos written in puppy blood on tusks of endangered elephants and walruses to store managers throughout the country to begin slowly clearing an entire aisle in the back of the store in anticipation of a shipment that will be arriving in a week. That shipment? A harmless set of towels emblazoned with a smiling snowman and a few boxes of clear decoration lights.

Then comes day two… a box full of snow globes depicting harmless “winter scenes” and whimsical children against a backdrop of the city skyline. A few older church-lady-esque shoppers are seen visibly shaking their heads as they walk by the mostly empty aisle with distinct shades of red and green backing the empty shelves.

It’s day three that really sets the world into a tizzy, though. Day three is when the heavens open up and reindeer, Santa, penguins, and all the Christmas schwag that had been collecting dust in warehouses for the past four months descends upon local Targets, Walgreens, WalMarts, Menards, Bass Pro Shops, PetSmarts, and Victoria’s Secrets. Someone hastily e-mails Bill O’Reilly to let him know of this calculating and sinister plot that has been unveiled in the middle of their trip to find a five gallon drum of mayonnaise and a pair of super-husky pants for their six year old at their local WalMart, and soon the media machine that is Fox News declares the war on Christmas has entered a new year and that God is angry.

It’s a liberal plot to roll Christmas and Thanksgiving into one big holiday with none of the religious thought! It’s the next step in destroying all Christian holiday observances! This is opening the US to a Hitler/Stalin/insert horrible dictator here!

Really, Bill? If big box retailers are creating such an atrocity by allowing customers to purchase Christmas decorations and Christmas-themed candy before Thanksgiving, why not pull your book from their shelves, cutting off their ability to make a profit on your words of wisdom and insight?

And Bill, if you thought about Christmas as much as a big box retail chain, perhaps it is your heart that would grow and your faith that would find new depth.

But it’s more than just Bill… it’s every day normal Christians that buy into just enough of the corporate Christmas, but become disgusted when others buy into it just a little bit more. They write letters to the editor of local newspapers decrying the row of plastic evergreens that are now available at your local Home Depot, never mentioning the fact that they bought their husband’s Christmas present in May when they found it on sale.

It’s a good thing there’s nothing else in the news to report and that the biggest and most important talking point is the evil, watered-down, crafted by Satan himself message of “Happy Holidays.”

Meanwhile, the message of Christmas… the hope and joy and redemption found in a Savior… is lost amongst petty squabbling by “christians” more worried by the way the city square depicts a menorah next to the manger than their own belief and observance of the day itself.

When you allow others (read: big box retailers looking for the highest profit possible and public officials putting together holiday displays to make everyone feel welcome) to shape your belief in and observance of Christmas, you have much larger issues than the jack-o-lantern/turkey/snowman display at your local Target.

Besides, if this means we get to enjoy Great Lakes Winter Ale a little earlier, is there really any harm?