The news media folks are hurting. They always seem to be hurting nowadays. Based on the subjects they endlessly explore, you would think every day is a slow news day.
Some of the stories they beat into the ground are important for a day or so, maybe even a week in some cases. But two weeks of a runaway bride, and SIX MONTHS of a teenage girl who disappeared in Aruba? Enough! (Whoever heard of Aruba before Fox News invaded?)
Certainly the disappearance of the teenager is a tragedy. We would not belittle its seriousness. But six months of Greta Van Susterin, even with cosmetic surgery, is a bit of overkill.
Until CNN came along some twenty-five years ago, there was about thirty minutes of national and international news, from 6:30 til 7 in the evening. Then along comes this upstart Ted Turner with the idea that there was enough news to fill the airwaves 24/7. There isn't.
It seemed like such a good idea, however, that several other media moguls lined up to duplicate Turner's CNN. Fox News has now left CNN in the dust with its endless diatribes.
The latest diatribe that is getting overblown is Fox's Bill O'Reilly and his obsession with the "Christmas" versus "Holiday" brouhaha. Granted, the courts have come out of left field with recent rulings that have caused some schools to overreact.
Is it a sinister plot of the ACLU, as O'Reilly charges? Probably not, but it keeps the pot stirred up.
O'Reilly should get over his Catholic convent mentality and read a little history. The Christmas holiday, like it or not, has hardly been a completely religious holiday for a long time...say 1,700 years. Constantine and the Romans preempted their winter festival, Saturnalia, to promote the recently state-endorsed religion, Christianity, to the public.
Heresy? No, history?
Don't get me wrong. I love the religious "traditions" of Christmas, including the church music, the candlelight service on Christmas eve, the Christmas stories in Matthew and Luke. But I also like the secular "traditions"...Christmas trees and lights, Santa Claus, and the family get-togethers that occur so seldom...even if they have nothing to do with the Biblical Christmas stories.
Let's face it. Christmas as a celebration of God's greatest gift to the world...is an individual matter...in each individual heart. It cannot be dictated by a court, or a TV celebrity, or a teacher. It can only be taught by example.
So, may your "Merry Christmas" greeting be just that...an expression of the love God gifted you so long ago that said, "Now I've shown you. Go out and show others."
MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!