Christmas 2015 has come and gone. If the Lord tarries, Christmas celebrations will return in a little over 11 months.

In our market-driven society, glossy Christmas fliers and catalogues will make inroads into homes even by October.

Lured by the blitz, parents will once more fantasize while children would pester for the 2016 edition of new merchandise.

Nervous about their fourth-quarter returns, retail stores would entice us to empty our wallets and seduce us to worship at the altar of consumerism.

Deep inside, we would realize something is amiss, yet being weak to cut the umbilical cord of pressure, we would succumb again to the pressure.

But if we care to trace our ‘Christian’ roots, we would discover that the church fathers had different ideas on how to celebrate the first coming of Christ to earth.

The first church official to propose special activities for the pre-Christmas period was Perpetus, the Bishop of Tours.

To help the flock prepare for the holidays, in A.D. 490, he advocated fasting every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from Nov. 11 to Christmas Eve.

This practice, which mirrored Lent, spread slowly throughout Christendom. In the Orthodox Church, Advent still includes fasting. In most places, it lasts from Nov. 15 to Dec. 24.

Armenian Orthodox Church members fast for three of the seven weeks between Nov. 15 and Jan. 6.

Sadly, in this ever-changing world of technology, the capitalist god of market economy generates fanciful expectations which, when unmet, create a vacuum in our lives.

In human history, vacuums have always been filled whether for good or bad ends.

The Communist revolution that propelled to power Joseph Stalin and, later, Vladimir Lenin, claimed to fill the vacuum of the masses with material prosperity and equality.

To achieve their goals, millions of people were put to death.

The egalitarianism they promised is portrayed in George Orwell’s novel Animal Farm where he wrote: “All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.”

The god of Communist ideology failed — the vacuum still persisted.

The rise of Nazism was indeed startling. Our sensibilities are still traumatized by what Adolf Hitler carried out. But we must not forget the vacuum he filled.

Europe was living on glorious memories of the past. The church was irrelevant.

So, Europe got Nazism which positioned itself as the rising tide of the future against the nostalgic waves of the past.

Europe and the world suffered as a result.

In our own times, the reign of terror unleashed over the world by suicide bombers raises the question: Why are young people willing to kill innocent lives and often be killed in the process?

The cadre of bombers comprises not just the unemployed and the illiterate, but the privileged educated young persons.

They are risking their lives for a future utopia.

Sadly, they think the vacuum in their own lives can be filled only by death and destruction.

The utopian revolutions of the failed gods of communism and Nazism and the new gods of the free market economy and terrorism are bound to fail as well.

History is proof that the gods of this world are bound to fail over and over again. Once the euphoria of success is over, the vacuum in human lives will begin to haunt them again.

As Christians, we should never allow the human failures of history to haunt us.

Long ago, humanity declared its independence from God and chased the whirlwinds of ideologies which were doomed to failure.

The biblical times were also brimming with Greek and Roman ideologies, but the simple message of the first Christmas angels was “Peace on earth.”

God’s answer to the problems of the world was a baby — indeed an invaluable treasure in an earthen vessel.

The self-giving love of God was manifested in a person, not in an ideology. The wise men were led by the star to the mundane manger and they were not disappointed.

Rather, they worshipped the King of kings and the Lord of lords.

Even today, the really wise can recognize the presence of God. They value human life, especially of the poor and the marginalized.

The gospel story of Jesus makes a society that yearns to overcome awful loneliness, isolation, and terrorized conflicts of human existence endurable by making it meaningful.

The gospel faith enables a person to live but it also enables him to die in peace.

The world which has suffered and is still suffering under deadly failed ideologies needs to hear this good news in 2016 and beyond  in order to have an encounter with the living Lord.

Narayan Mitra is pastor of Merritt Baptist Church at 2499 Coutlee Ave., Merritt. [email protected]