THE FUTURE OF CHRISTMAS 

You would think that a traditional religious celebration like Christmas, that has lasted 2,000 years, would go on forever, wouldn't you? But this long revered Christian event may eventually go the way of the pagan god Baal's version of roof top love-making. At the moment Christians lead in the total number of adherents to the faith with 1,669,520,440 members. Last year new Christians totalled about 25 million worldwide.

For most of the last 20 centuries devout European and American Christians not only had the methods and means to proslytize their faith, but also during most of that time they had control of the bulk of the world's finance, communications, technology and advertising know-how. That has changed. When any environment changes as dramatically as ours has in the last two decades, institutions dominant in the old environment experience much difficulty in maintaining that position in the new, radically altered environment. Religion, like customs, societies, political forms and individual views, changes. Today is no exception. The accelerating change in other aspects of our lives probably contributes to changes in religions. If you concur with the belief that 90 percent of all the goods we will interact with during the next decade haven't even been developed yet, then you must ask yourself how will this affect religion? Remember that 50 percent of all those goods and services around you now didn't exist just five years ago!

At the height of Christianity, especially during the last five centuries, primarily Europeans spread the faith throughout the western world. They were the dominant population, not only in wealth but in the numbers of people on the planet. For most of that period there were only one billion people on Planet Earth. Today that many reside in China alone. Even as late as 1930 the globe had only two billion people.

Now more than a billion are atheist or non-religious (they had the largest growth last year -- more than 33 million). More than 1.5 billion people are Moslem or Hindu. Almost another 300,000,000 follow the many "new" religions or Chinese folk religions. Some follow more than one faith. With such a wide spread choice in a time of instantaneous communications, growth possibilities of a religion that adapts to the changing times may rapidly accelerate the addition of new adherents. On the other hand, there is always the firm fact that many may find change too stressful and seek sanctuary in older, known religions.

On top of all this potential for further change lies the undeniable fact that the Christmas season has become such a dominant economic force in the Western World, despite the revulsion of many that Christmas has become too commercial, that it alone may have the power to continue as some form of year-end celebration for several centuries.

WORLD RELIGIONS

Christian 1,669,520,440 Moslem 880,555,210 Non-religious 866,759,660 Hindu 663,495,450 Buddhist 311,836,170 Atheist 229,711,410 Chinese folk religion 172,278,230 New religions 111,911,560 Tribal 92,040,570 Jewish 18,169,340 Sikh 17,187,390 Shamanist 12,381,640 Other 8,221,480 Confucian 6,188,160 B'hai 4,691,890 Jains 3,555,690 Shinto 3,379,030

TOTAL 5,071,883,320 Source: Encyclopedia Britannica 1989 Book of the Year: 1988 totals

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