Why are you already celebrating Christmas?

Put away your reindeer — Christmas is eight weeks away

Put it away.
(Image credit: Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

The orange boxes of Nerds and Fun Dip have barely found their way into the clearance bins. Old ladies have scarcely begun to arrange their made-in-China woven cornucopias on the mantles of their gas fireplaces alongside the plastic gourds and model turkeys. Christmas is eight weeks away, but on All Saints Day — the day after Halloween — I saw a sign outside a local bar advertising a "Christmas Bazaar" at what is technically my parish church scheduled for Nov. 4.

This was, if nothing else, a welcome reminder of why my family is not registered at Immaculate Conception. Already the sectaries of the Santa cult are preparing for their annual feast of grotesque GDP-boosting consumption, and we want as little to do with it as possible. Never mind the inherent iniquity of pretending that the birth of Our Lord has anything to do with snowmen or eggnog or Macy's or some late chubby 19th-century American literary character. It isn't even Advent yet.

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Matthew Walther

Matthew Walther is a national correspondent at The Week. His work has also appeared in First Things, The Spectator of London, The Catholic Herald, National Review, and other publications. He is currently writing a biography of the Rev. Montague Summers. He is also a Robert Novak Journalism Fellow.