The pernicious secularism promoted by big business was epitomized for me during a visit to Walgreens on Christmas Eve. As I searched for the tinsel that my six-year-old had requested for the tree, I heard a commercial for flu shots to the tune of “The Twelve Days of Christmas”. Since the word “Christmas” is verboten in the language of modern big business, the singer in the commercial altered the words to remove the offensive language. If my memory serves me correctly, he sung words to the effect that “on the first day of the holidays” his true love had given him the flu. With this admittedly trivial effort by Walgreens to inoculate its customers against the harmful effects of Christmas ringing in my ears, I was heartened upon my return home to discover a wonderful commercial being shown in the UK this Christmas season for the supermarket chain, Sainsbury’s. It takes as its theme the famous Christmas Truce in the trenches in 1914. It presents a profoundly Christian message and rekindled my faith in the ability of big business to be big hearted.
I urge all visitors to the Ink Desk to take a few minutes to watch this heart-lifting commercial:
I saw this, sent it to someone I know, just as impressed as you were and wanting to share. My correspondent replied: “Don’t forward that! People in the UK are up in arms against Sainsbury’s for exploiting the Christmas season for profit. Huge uproar over this.”
This commercial is simply breath-taking! What a deeply moving contrast to the senseless drivel we’re bombarded with here.
Hearing the words of “Stille Nacht” brought precious memories – and tears – to me as one who spent several Cold War years along the West German border with the Communist world.
War is not inevitable; how appropriately ironic that three Slavs Herr Hitler would have denigrated as sub-human – Walesa, Solzhenitsyn and Wojtyla – played such enormous roles in averting the awful conflict most thought was ultimately unavoidable. Yet these three men of faith and genius realized that Christ is the Lord of History and that with him all good things are possible.
I’m sorry for having commented beyond the commercial but I think there is some linkage!