A Pre-Apocalyptic Message for Holier-Than-Thou Holiday Humbugs

[I]t all comes back, the old pleasant month-long Santy-Claus-store-window Christmas. It wasn't so bad, really, the commercial Christmas, the month of Christmas Eves, stores open every night. everyone feeling good and generous and spending money freely, handsome happy Americans making the cash registers jingle, the nice commercial cards, Holy Night, and soft-eyed pretty girls everywhere...

Thus speaks Dr. Thomas More, the narrator-protagonist of Walker Percy's Love in the Ruins, originally subtitled "The Adventures of a Bad Catholic at a Time Near the End of the World." It's a book that should be required reading for those anti-American Catholic traditionalist Scrooges who are outraged — outraged! — by anyone wishing them a Merry Christmas before December 24^th.