Cyber Monday and the soul of Christmas

On November 28, 2005, the Motorola RAZR V3 flip-phone was making shopping lists, as was the Xbox 360. A device that allowed iPods to play through a cassette deck was popular.

And Cyber Monday was born.

The idea of focusing on online sales the Monday after Thanksgiving has been a boon. Last year, Cyber Monday online sales grew to a record $3.45 billion. I did an online search for “Cyber Monday” this morning: 239,000,000 results came up in .53 seconds.

With Black Friday and Cyber Monday, the Christmas season in America has officially started. Shoppers are expected to spend an average of $967 each, up 3 percent from last year. But while the economy is strong and consumers are optimistic, this morning’s headlines remind us that the things that matter most are not things.

Shoppers were evacuated from a mall in New York yesterday after reports of a shooting. A man entered a Costco in Kansas waving a weapon Sunday morning; an off-duty police officer shot and killed him.

This after more than three hundred worshipers died when their Egyptian mosque was attacked by terrorists last Friday. Searchers are still looking for an Argentine submarine that went missing eleven days ago; it had only a seven-day supply of oxygen when it reported its last position. And a man who survived the shooting in Las Vegas was killed in a hit-and-run, according to his wife.

Each story reminds us that life is as fragile as it is precious.

I’m especially thinking about that fact today after spending the Thanksgiving weekend with our sons, their wives, and our three grandchildren. Watching our children play with their children filled my heart with great joy.

That’s how our Father feels about every one of his children.

Holy places aren’t holy

As we enter the Christmas season, our Lord wants us to value people more than possessions and Jesus most of all. To make that point, I’d like to focus today on an insight from C. S. Lewis that has been on my mind recently.

In The…