It is October 12 and I am on my way to the local mall to purchase a new carry-on bag. The wheels are worn off of the one I have been using for the last eight years. I am scanning the radio channels and notice that one station has already switched to a twenty-four-hour Christmas-music format. Bruce Springsteen is singing familiar reminders about Santa Claus seeing you "when you are sleeping" and knowing "when you are awake."

My mother used such reminders as part of some behavioral modification strategy leading up to the Christmas season every year. She knew how much we kids anticipated the Sears and Roebuck Christmas catalogue each September. Children of my generation, the baby boomers, would study its toy pages daily, like racetrack junkies studying betting odds, circling and prioritizing the desired commodities in hopes of a Christmas Day payoff.

Christmas was like a second birthday but a much bigger and better deal! Mom’s reminder was clear: I’d better be good or I would get a lump of coal in my stocking instead of the new Red Ryder BB gun that I was willing to trade my little sister for. (Apparently, the reminders worked, because I did get my Red Ryder that Christmas. No, I didn’t shoot my eye out, but I did ricochet a BB off my forehead once while target shooting in our basement.)

As we grow older, our desired gifts become more sophisticated. Playskool toys no longer suffice; now the demand is for the expensive "new, slimmer" PlayStation 3. Unfortunately, the idolatrous promise of the desired object to bring us life-fulfillment and meaning is never realized. The newness eventually wears off and we seek the next new, best thing. We are hypnotically lured by the seductive marking sirens of mindless consumption: "you have the power to make the video-game player on your list very merry this holiday season with a cool new console … the best gift of the season!"

By buying into these false promises of secular consumerism, however, we continue to feed our children’s materialistic self-focused addictions.

According to the National Retail Federation, as of 2010, adult consumers spent an average of $830 each on holiday food, decorations, and presents. In a two-parent family, that equates to roughly $1,660. Now add this cost to the average American household credit card balance of $15,788 with an annual percentage rate of 14.67.

Christmas has been hijacked and exploited. We have professed allegiance to Jesus but celebrate his birth with an orgy of materialism.

Christmas is not your birthday, it’s Jesus’ birthday!