{"id":25381,"date":"2016-12-15T00:01:35","date_gmt":"2016-12-15T08:01:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/?p=25381"},"modified":"2016-12-15T00:01:35","modified_gmt":"2016-12-15T08:01:35","slug":"christmas-is-big","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/christmas-is-big\/","title":{"rendered":"Christmas Is Big. Bigger Than Christianity — And Donald Trump"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"A<\/a>
Christmas is big. And so is this\u00a0cheery Santa Claus painted by a local artist on a holiday\u00a0store window in our neighborhood. Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By Barbara Falconer Newhall<\/em><\/p>\n

Christmas is big\u00a0— bigger than Christianity. And it’s getting bigger.<\/p>\n

Our decades-old World Book Encyclopedia devotes four dutiful\u00a0pages to Christianity — and nine luscious full-color\u00a0spreads to Christmas. Copyrighted 1994, our family’s set of books sits on a shelf within reach of our dining room table. There, it was\u00a0a handy reference in our pre-cell phone days whenever\u00a0a dinner\u00a0table conversation veered<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The Parrocchia church spires in San Miguel de Allende, where Christmas is important, and so is Christianity. Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

into a debate over, say, which came first, Hannibal crossing the Alps? Or Alexander crossing the Hellespont?<\/p>\n

(Hannibal made his journey in 218\u00a0BCE. Alexander\u00a0began his conquests 116 years earlier, in 334 BCE. But you knew that already, didn’t you?)<\/p>\n

Christianity’s\u00a0Popularity Gap<\/h5>\n

And now, with the digitization of everything, the\u00a0popularity\u00a0gap between the religion and the holiday yawns even wider.\u00a0A Google search for “Christianity” at this writing\u00a0produced about 117\u00a0million results. It took the\u00a0Google crawlers exactly 0.58 seconds seconds to come up with that\u00a0list.<\/p>\n

“Christmas” takes Google a whole lot\u00a0longer to search — .76\u00a0seconds. That’s because Christmas\u00a0scores a blockbuster 1.73 billion results.<\/p>\n

Christmas 1.73 billion. Christianity 117 million.<\/p>\n

Back in 1994, if the pages of our World Book are any indication, Christmas was a little more than\u00a0twice as meaningful to seekers of knowledge as Christianity. Today,<\/p>\n

\"Christmas<\/a>
Christmas got a nine-page spread in our 1994 World Book Encyclopedia.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Christmas<\/a>
Christianity got much simpler coverage. Photos by Barbara Newhall<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Christmas is leaving\u00a0Christianity in the dust: It’s got 15\u00a0times the\u00a0Internet\u00a0mentions of Christianity.<\/p>\n

To put things into a 2016 popularity contest perspective, my search for “Donald Trump” brought up a 419\u00a0million results in 0.73 seconds when I Googled him. For the record, that means that during the third week of Advent, 2016, the media celeb turned pol was a\u00a0bigger inspiration\u00a0than Christianity. No surprise.<\/p>\n

But, hooray for Christmas. The holiday has\u00a0got the hotel mogul\u00a0beat — by a smashing\u00a0four-to-one\u00a0margin.<\/p>\n

Until he\u00a0decides to cross the Hellespont.<\/p>\n

More Donald stories at “Jesus Was a Loser. Does That Make Trump a Winner?”<\/a>\u00a0 More Christmas at “Witnessing to the Light With Tinsel and Rudolph.”<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"The<\/a><\/p>\n

Christmas is big. Christianity’s biggest holiday is leaving the religion in the dust with 15 times the Internet mentions of Christianity.\u00a0Read more.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":26097,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,13],"tags":[135,35,34,1786,1361,1787,55,82,23,891,1788],"class_list":["post-25381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-my-changing-family","category-my-rocky-spiritual-journey","tag-christianity","tag-christmas","tag-dont-miss","tag-google","tag-holidays","tag-internet","tag-family-stories","tag-on-the-funny-side","tag-religion","tag-san-miguel","tag-world-book-encyclopedia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25381"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25381\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}