***”Music, Books and Psycho Space Robots” is a regular column published on Primary Ignition by Kevin Kenealy, staff writer and Nightmare Fuel Provider. The views expressed here are his, and do not reflect the views of the staff of Primary Ignition.***

I just watched Home Alone 2: Lost in New York again the other day and noticed something I never noticed before. At the end of the movie, Kevin is at Rockefeller Center in front of the New York City Christmas tree and appears to be praying to the tree.

God’s name is not used, but he is in some sort of prayer conversation. I haven’t talked about religion at all in any of my columns, but I think ‘tis the season to do so. I recently finished a Biblical Perspectives class at Trinity Christian College in suburban Chicago, and the class showed me how to look at the world with more of a Christian worldview.

This means that, in large part, many things in our world are packaged in a secular verbiage. Take the phrase “natural resources” for example. If you were looking at the phrase “natural resources” from a Christian worldview, you would call natural resources something like “creational gifts.”

This column I’m writing I no way intend to force Christianity down your throat or impose a belief upon you. I merely find it fascinating how there is much in our world that I believe has helped tempt us away from our religious beliefs and find them not as important as they maybe should be.

Take Home Alone 2, which was released in 1992. From my perspective this country has become increasingly paranoid about offending the salad bowl (multicultural) population, more so than it is about spreading values. We do a good job of celebrating diversity, but don’t celebrate our individual faiths in society. We are too scared to celebrate an individual faith because one group of people may not be represented. The New Found Glory song “Holiday” does a good job of looking at this by singing about Hanukah, Christmas and Kwanzaa all in the same song.

But Home Alone 2 is a movie exclusively about Christmas, and in the scene where Kevin is praying, we don’t hear God’s name but we see Kevin praying to a Christmas tree. Why? Because it’s probably safer not to offend anyone by getting overly religious and keeping it subtle.

It’s interesting when you look at movies throughout the years. About a week ago, I watched One Magic Christmas, a movie that was released in 1985. That movie stays truer to the meaning of Christmas as Gideon, a Christmas angel, is out to help a mother find the Christmas spirit. While this is a good movie and the message is pure, the religious aspect is mixed in with a plot thread about Santa Claus and a trip to the North Pole.

Then there’s the gradual replacement of the more religious It’s A Wonderful Life as a constant rerun Christmas special with the secular A Christmas Story. While I love A Christmas Story and such secular films, I find it interesting that as time goes on, we seem to get further away from deeper, more religious meaning in our culture.

Image from festivusweb.com

Seinfeld had it best with the celebration of Festivus. “A Festivus for the rest of us!” exclaimed Frank Costanza in the 1997 episode “The Strike.” Frank created a made-up holiday called “Festivus” on the episode that included traditions such as the airing of grievances, the feats of strength and putting up the Festivus pole instead of a tree.

The made up holiday caught on and according to The Christian Science Monitor; people all around the world now recognize the holiday. In Indonesia, a blogger tweeted, “Festivus is here: Time to air out grievances.” A 38-year-old prison inmate in California,  Malcolm Alarmo King, even claimed to believe in “Festivism” so he could be fed kosher meals. The judge granted his wishes for two months, but the scam was caught on in another court eventually.

Maybe our culture is in Festivus season, which was celebrated December 23 by the way. But maybe that’s the direction we’re heading in. In a world where we are too paranoid to offend anyone, maybe we should simply say a “Festivus for the rest of us!” instead of “Merry Christmas!”

Front page image from crazy-frankenstein.com.