(UNDATED) The Grinch stealing Christmas this year is a Hydra bearing two heads: corruption and incompetence. While retailers watch tapped-out customers stay away, headlines relate all-time duplicity records like Illinois Gov. Blagojevich’s alleged plan to sell a Senate seat and investment guru Bernard Madoff’s alleged $50 billion Ponzi scheme. We also read unsavory additions to the annals of cluelessness like U.S. automakers’ determination to continue business as usual in the face of mounting political scorn and consumer rejection, leading banks’ apparent determination to use federal bailout funds for continued speculation, and politicians’ insistence that ideology solves problems. Yahoo’s witty “OMG!” section needs to broaden its “Oh, my gosh, what were they thinking?” awards beyond celebrity fashion miscues like actress Nicole Kidman’s gaunt parade in gold. Bad taste in Hollywood cannot keep pace with political chaos in Illinois, evaporating fortunes, and hundreds of thousands of jobs being lost in corporate disintegrations. The rest of us are left wondering: Is this worsening recession merely another dip in the business cycle and a correction to overheated prosperity? Or is it the collapse of a national house of cards, the unraveling of an epic Ponzi scheme in which we all participated by believing paper values, living large on credit, and trusting corporate leaders to be wise and prudent when, in fact, they were merely lucky and had no long-term business plans, just catalogs for Bentleys and oceanfront property? I am reminded of the cinematic moment in “The Truman Show,” when the Jim Carrey character suddenly realizes his entire life has been a television show. “Has any of this been real?” he cries. And then he sucks it up and walks off the set. This could be the Christmas when millions of us just walk off the set. We don’t get hooked on relentless advertising. We don’t defer the mortgage in order to please children on Christmas morning. We stop pretending that best-case projections are real numbers. We stop trusting our employers to be handling our lives with care. We stop dreaming at auto dealerships and gadget stores. We stop hoping that some consumable good will ease the existential doubt that has been building for decades. We stop frothing over trivial religious conflicts. In other words, we grow up. We experience an outbreak of adult behavior. Soon, more delusions will collapse. Out will go the belief that children are trophies polished by hovering and not complex creatures requiring actual parenting. Out will go the belief that an occasional hour in worship is all that God requires. Out will go the belief that good sex will anchor a healthy marriage. Out will go the belief in entitlement. Out will go stubborn ideologies as a substitute for grappling with reality. Out will go self-medication of depression, worry and loneliness. Rather than lose ourselves in a last-minute burst of seasonal sentimentality, we need to see that this Grinch hasn’t stolen anything. We need to let the cultural Christmas die. The Incarnation that actually took place was so much better than any pile of gifts. The Incarnation was God’s way of doing exactly what we need done: telling truth to a world trapped in lies, calling people to something better than wealth and power, urging us to connect with each other on the basis of love, not appetite and profit, and revealing justice, mercy, healing and goodness as infinitely more life-giving than Bentleys and granite countertops.

(Tom Ehrich is a writer, church consultant and Episcopal priest based in New York. He is the author of “Just Wondering, Jesus,” and the founder of the Church Wellness Project, http://www.churchwellness.com. His Web site is www.morningwalkmedia.com.)

AMB/DEA END EHRICH

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