"The Day After"

The day after Christmas I asked my wife, "Darling, is it me or have you noticed the many commercials on weight management program and exercise equipments?". Somehow these commercials, which appeared to go into hibernation during the month leading to Christmas, have suddenly returned with a vengeance!

Picture: Courtesy of trashyourtv

Americans are really spoilt for choice - in terms of the number of channels they have on the tv. On a quick count, I can get access to 80-90 channels on our tv. So, my guess that the remote control is the most utilized electronic gadget in a typical American home would not be far off. You will also not get any prize for guessing where the term "couch potato" comes from.

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I am astonished to hear that the average American watches over 4½ hours of tv every single day! That adds up to 31 ½ hours every week, 5 ½ solid days per month and more than two whole months every year. By the age of 70, that is over 13 years watching television! Aren't there more important things you would rather be doing with this time? Imagine what you could do with all this time. (refer: http://www.trashyourtv.com/). Parents, beware of what you children are watching!

• Children are exposed to 50,000 tv commercials a year.
• Children witness 14,000 sexual references a year.
• Children witness 16,000 tv murders by age 18.

Except for the news, weather channel and some game and cook shows, which my wife likes, we don't watch the programs on tv. I find it a test of my patience due to the frequent and lengthy commercial breaks. Also, many of the programs are not very wholesome. Instead, my wife and I watch dvds, which we borrow from the library.

Anyway, over the Christmas holidays, we managed to catch the perennial rerun of "Home Alone!" on the tv. On the recommendation of a close friend, we also watched another classic film, "A Christmas Story". It is a funny and entertaining film (produced in 1983, I think) about a boy who wished (and schemed) for a "pop-rifle" for his Christmas present. It is a family movie that everyone can relate to. A reviewer commented that "it is about childhood memories and the feelings they evoke". But the most incredible thing I find about the show is that it was actually aired on the same channel (TBS) continuously for 24 hours starting from Christmas eve! Apparently, the 24-hour marathon screening has been an ongoing tradition for 11 years, since 1997!

Our pastor, Dan Nold, gives the church members a weekly update. From his most recent sharing, you can catch a glimpse of what the days after Christmas are like for the typical American families:

I don't know how you feel in the days after Christmas. But isn't a shame that what is anticipated for so long should be over so quickly?

It does not take long for the magic of Christmas to turn into the reality of “the day after.” The carolers have sung their last song. Christmas gifts are fast becoming January’s bills. Soon the decorations will go back in the boxes and finally the Christmas tree will be placed by the road. That's always the last thing to go in our house.

Yet, in spite of the shopping, in spite of staying up till 2:00am Christmas morning to wrap presents that will be unwrapped six hours later in the space of twenty minutes, so that we can travel four hours to spend the day with forty people we haven’t seen for a year, there’s still something potentially very special about Christmas. If we can find our way through all the wrappings and trappings, we can reach a special place. It will take more than a day to find it, but it wil l last longer than a day when we reach it.

What if Christmas were a way of life, rather than a day of the year?