What would December be without the tacky decorations, the monster sales, the bustling malls, the frantic customers running about with shopping lists in hand, the child-like anticipation of the gifts and the merriment that surrounds Christmas? It would be January.

Christmas’ heritage actually reaches all the way back into pagan times. Before Christianity, there was a large winter holiday and festival that many pagan religions celebrated near the winter solstice of Dec. 22. When the early Christians started evangelizing these people, Christmas was enacted in order to compete with the pagan winter holiday.

The fact of the matter is that no one really knows when Jesus was truly born because those records were probably not taken in those times, let alone in the small village of Bethlehem. That doesn’t mean we can’t celebrate the birth of Jesus, it’s just that the day we choose celebrate his birth is arbitrary.

I say all this because I do believe in the rampant commercialization of the Christmas season. It gives us an excuse to get out of our homes and congregate with humanity in a time when the weather and the cold would persuade us otherwise. This is the time when we think more about giving to others and putting their wants above our own. Why else would we plow through holiday mall traffic and horrendous lines if not to make our loved ones happy?

I will agree that occasionally the holiday goes overboard. When there are blinking nativity scenes out in people’s lawns, I have to cringe a little bit. There is also the insatiable need for parents to run from store to store for days on end so their child gets the “it” toy of the season. People should have fun when they shop for others; it shouldn’t be a competition. On the other hand, there is something to say for how much a parent must love their child to go to such outlandish lengths to make that child happy.

There will always be those who say that Christmas should be a solemn holiday of contemplation the birth of Christ and the severity of God becoming flesh in order to save us from ourselves. Poppycock! It should be a wild celebration of the coming of the Lord, a time of thanksgiving for all we have and love. Now is not the time to sit shut up in our homes and quietly observe Jesus’ birth–it is a time to get out and see each other before the ravages of the winter forcibly confine us to our homes.

Lastly, there is nothing quite like waking up on Christmas morning and coming down the stairs to the Christmas tree, where piles of adorned boxes patiently wait to be pillaged for what’s inside. It doesn’t matter how old a person gets, everyone loves that anxious anticipation of looking over their presents before they open them. I’m not sure if this is politically correct to say, but Christmas for me is not about Jesus being born or the miracles that follow. For me, Christmas is the look on my mother and father’s faces as they watch my brother and me hungrily tear through packaging and excitedly take out the presents we had been praying for, for months on end.