Richard Doerflinger on Keeping One's Sanity during the Advent and Christmas Seasons

"Is it my imagination, or has the Christmas shopping season (or 'holiday shopping season') extended itself by another few weeks?

"What we used to call 'Black Friday' sales, beginning the day after Thanksgiving, seem to be creeping back toward early November.

"So we are heading toward an amorphous two-month 'holiday season' - not much consolation to those who will be working harder than ever during these months, either to sell us presents or to earn enough money to buy them (or both). Some holiday.

"And Thanksgiving may increasingly lose its meaning, merely marking the halfway point in the commercial frenzy. It's an embarrassing holiday for secularists anyway. Who or what can they thank? And ugh, Puritans are involved. . . .

"So I have some practical tips for keeping one's sanity during this Advent and Christmas."

In a recent commentary, Richard Doerflinger, a Public Policy Fellow at the University of Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture and an Adjunct Fellow in Bioethics and Public Policy at the National Catholic Bioethics Center, reflected on our observance of the holiday season and offered some suggestions designed to help us stay appropriately focused during this time. These suggestions include seeing Christmas Day as the beginning (not the end) of festivity and gift-giving, finding ways to keep the religious meaning of the season before our eyes, and remembering that Christmas "means anything at all because it marks the beginning of the central event in the history of the universe."

To access Mr. Doerflinger's complete post, please visit:

The Boston Pilot: Echoes: Richard Doerflinger: Happy holy days (29 NOV 19)