Christmas Contradictions

It is the task of marketing departments of all varieties to keep a calculating finger on the pulse of culture, particularly when it comes to consumer trends. The entertainment industry alone has a multi-billion dollar reason to keep their fingers close — which means their research into the entertainment needs of the world is essential. For those of us fascinated with cultural studies, it also means their research into what the public will respond to favorably or unfavorably offers an interesting glimpse into the current cultural landscape.

But even the researchers are getting confused, and especially during the holidays. They find we are sending mixed signals. An article in The New York Times quotes one researcher describing “a curiously widespread contradiction in modern American pop culture — the desperate, self-negating need to be both cynical and sentimental at the same time.”(1)

Film historian David Thomson notes of film in general, “One of the main problems in the industry is that young kids do not take the story material seriously. They think it’s mocking.” As a result, “the things we once took very seriously, we half-mock them now.”(2) By and large, the cultural trend marks a growing distrust and rejection of story and meaning and a general embrace of cynicism. And yet, in recent market research, executives found that audiences of all ages reacted badly to advertising that too sharply dismissed or disrespected the notion of Christmas. There is a measurably greater desire for storylines with hopeful implications in December. Apparently, we want to claim life is meaningless, but only 11 months out of the year. The typical cynicism governing the production and marketing of motion pictures is toned down at Christmastime. It seems we want to argue the cake doesn’t exist and eat it too.

I have always appreciated the brave confession of C.S. Lewis that he was once living in a whirl of contradictions. This is a difficult thing even to notice of one’s life, let alone admit it aloud. Said Lewis, “I maintained that God did not exist. I was also very angry with God for not existing. I was equally angry with Him for creating a world.” Our own contradictions often exist glaringly amongst our thoughts, even as they go unnoticed.

Yet there is a promise for those who seek and it has come near in the birth we just celebrated. God is continually at work flattening our altars of inconsistency, uncovering our contradictions, and urging us into eyesight. The child we welcome in December remains among us the months ahead. In the momentous words of a hymn perhaps recently on our lips:

Joy to the earth, the Savior reigns!
Let men their songs employ;
While fields and floods, rocks, hills and plains
Repeat the sounding joy,
Repeat the sounding joy,
Repeat, repeat, the sounding joy.

Our redeemer will continue to find you. May it be his song we hear and employ.

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1. As quoted in the New York Times, (Dec. 14, 2004).

2. Ibid.
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