They say as we get older our genes play a greater and greater role in shaping our lives.  Every now and then I’m startled to see my father staring back at me from the mirror.  But right now my genetic tendencies extend back to the 1600s, a time when the Hosfords were good Puritans.

The Puritans were interesting people.  While they held lofty ideals and considered themselves holier than God, Puritans are mostly remembered for not liking much of anything.  Puritans didn’t drink or smoke or surf the Internet.  They saw such things as a waste of time, time that could otherwise be spent criticizing their neighbors for not being as godly as they were.

Puritans especially disliked Christmas and in 1659 actually banned its observance in Boston.  For the next 22 years people could be fined for feasting, not laboring or celebrating in any way.  And while I like feasting and not working as much as any of my non-Puritan ancestors, I do find myself possessed of a growing puritanical dislike of Christmas.

Never is our character as a society more evident than at Christmas.  And while for many years the good in this character enabled me to tolerate the bad, the balance seems to be shifting.  Not to disparage the kind wishes and generous acts that flow more freely this time of year, but do retailers really need to start putting up Christmas displays before Halloween?  Christmas has devolved into a consumer-feeding frenzy with many businesses earning the majority of their revenue during that time of year.  And while, like my industrious Puritan ancestors, I see revenue as a good thing, shopping has eclipsed everything else.

Some people talk about the “War on Christmas,” feeling they are being attacked for trying to retain a religious view of the season.  Yet many of these same people aim their resentment at those who seek to remind us that we live in a religiously diverse society when in fact it is commercialism that is the enemy.  That, after all, was the message Charlie Brown tried to tell us when I was just a little kid.  And while the Christmas spirit once transformed Ebenezer Scrooge from a churlish lout into a man who kept Christmas all year long, the spirit of today has transformed me into a churlish lout.

Yet for all my distaste of rampant materialism and recycled music, I have to confess that there is something special about this time of year.  As the days shorten and grow cold, there is a greater appreciation of not just the warmth of the hearth but the warmth of the heart.  This time of year has been celebrated by people across the northern latitudes since long before Christ’s birth and even the Native Americans who once lived here marked the winter solstice.

The Pawnee brought cedar trees into their earthlodges for the same reason we bring Christmas trees into our homes – to remind us that the death of the year is not the death of light or hope.  And the fact that the Pawnee’s cousins in Kansas may have sacrificed a maiden to mark the solstice is just another reminder that no matter where or when, this time of year has always brought out both the best and the worst in people.

So I guess, as in years past, I’ll try to see the good.  But that sure gets harder each passing year – probably because there are ever more advertisements in the way.