Imagine a child, eyes wide with curiosity, asking, “What does Christmas really mean?” In many homes, the answer might be a recital of consumer traditions: “It’s about the spirit of giving!”—accompanied by a swift nod toward a supermarket’s towering Santa.
Humanity has a long history of taking the sacred—whether religious, cultural, or philosophical—and reshaping it to fit agendas, trends, or fears. This phenomenon manifests in extremes, but also in the mundane: inflatable gingerbread men bobbing in front yards, pop songs in which an artist sings the letters X.M.A.S. (whilst missing out the word Christ, entirely), and a global holiday season where the name “Jesus” is as likely to be replaced by a snowman emoji as it is to evoke reflection on a first-century birth. The slippage of meaning is not just a casual oversight; it’s a mirror reflecting our collective relationship with the sacred.
The Marketplace of Meaning
Consider Christmas. Though rooted in the birth of a spiritual teacher, its modern incarnation is a £700 billion industry. Festivity has fused with consumerism so completely that Black Friday—a day of “unbridled capitalism,” as some call it—now rhymes with Friday the 13th in terms of public frenzy. The story of a humble manger is upstaged by the spectacle of stores opening at dawn, their doors flung wide not for worship but for warranty-sealed satisfaction. The commercialised holiday isn’t merely “secularisation”; it’s a distortion that prioritises profit over the peace it once symbolised.
Yet, this isn’t new. The early Church itself borrowed pagan solstice traditions to ease the transition for converts, blending yule logs and evergreens into Christian practice. The sacred, it seems, is always in conversation with the culture around it. But when the core message—the reason for the season, so to speak—is eclipsed by glittering distractions, something essential is lost.
The Extremes of Absolution
At the other end of the spectrum lies religious extremism, where sacred texts are parsed like code for violence. Verses advocating compassion are weaponised; rituals become performances of dominance. The same word “jihad,” meaning “struggle” in Arabic, is twisted into a banner for terror. Or consider how passages of love and mercy in the Abrahamic faiths are cherry-picked to justify hate. Here, distortion isn’t a byproduct of culture—it’s a tool of control. Sacredness is co-opted to legitimise power, fear, and exclusion, reducing complex spiritual frameworks to slogans for violence.
But the mechanism is similar: both consumerism and extremism exploit the sacred’s emotional resonance, repackaging it for their own ends. One drowns meaning in noise; the other silences it with dogma.
The Universal Plague of Simplification
This isn’t confined to religion. Any sacred idea—love, liberty, environmentalism—is vulnerable. “Love” becomes a hashtag for rom-com tropes; “freedom” is co-opted to justify selfishness; “saving the planet” is reduced to buying eco-friendly tote bags. The sacred, by its nature, demands depth. When it’s distilled into a slogan, a sale, or a strict rulebook, it loses its transformative power.
Why does this happen? Perhaps because the sacred is uncomfortable in an age of instant gratification. Reverence requires reflection; it resists being turned into a commodity or a weapon. But humans—whether out of laziness, greed, or fear—prefer the easy version. The inflatable gingerbread man is less daunting than the concept of a divine incarnation. A flag-waving chant is simpler than grappling with the weight of national history.
Reclaiming the Sacred
So, how do we reclaim what’s been lost? The answer lies not in nostalgia nor in extremism, but in intentionality. To honour the sacred is to engage with it—messily, imperfectly, but authentically. This means teaching children that Christmas is both a spiritual event and a cultural touchstone, without letting one overshadow the other. It means reading sacred texts with both a scholar’s rigour and an open heart, recognising their capacity for both violence and virtue.
The sacred should unsettle us. It should demand more than a festive playlist or a dogma-laden oath. It should invite dialogue, growth, and humility. When we distort it, we don’t just misrepresent history—we impoverish ourselves. The manger, sacred texts, the Earth, the ideals of justice: these are not decorations to be inflated or deflated at whim. They are living truths, demanding more from us than our propensity for simplification.
This Christmas, as you hang stockings or recite verses, ask yourself: What am I truly honouring? And what have I let become a hollow shell? The answer might just reignite the sacred—not as a commodity or a weapon, but as a flame worth tending.
Worldwide Temple of Aurora 