The following is intended as satire.

Christmas is only a week away. There is still time to get those last-minute decorations for your virtue-signaling tree or the very woke loved one in your life. Here are some great items to consider.

Your Scranton Joe-loving friends would appreciate a tree decorated with Bicep Biden showing off his vaccine shot. Maybe throw in some ice cream cones to go along with them. The Biden ornaments might get hungry.

Or, if they’re more of an Anthony Fauci fan, here are some ornaments celebrating his achievements. He is the science, after all. You can also suggest that your friends add festive masks as garlands to show everyone how virtuous they are. For parents, get them this laptop ornament to celebrate the fact that their kids are still hybrid learning. Finally, this hand sanitizer is the final garish glittering touch to brighten The Fauci Tree.

Maybe you have an LGBTQ+ activist friend. World Market is the store for all ornaments rainbow. It even has a Rainbow Santa. The Rainbow Tree will signal to everyone in the vicinity where they stand … and don’t you dare challenge them, bigot.

A Black Lives Matter ornament might be more their speed. Nothing says ending racism and oppression like decorating in black and white with these Black Power ornaments.

End of sarcastic rant.

In all seriousness, the commercialization of Christmas has long been rather outrageous. But these woke ornaments take the cake. Politics is not what Christmas is about and really shouldn’t have a place on your tree.

The tree itself is a later addition to the Christian celebration of the holiday. During the Renaissance, the tree became a symbol of Christmas most likely because of the conflation of the Nativity story with the story of Creation through morality plays. It is doubly appropriate that these stories are told together, because it shows the problem (sin) and the solution (Christ). Furthermore, Christmas and the feast of Adam and Eve were celebrated at the same time. Since the tree was supposed to represent the tree of knowledge from the Creation story, the first ornaments were representative of the forbidden fruit that Adam and Eve ate.

It wasn’t until Queen Victoria of England’s husband, Prince Albert, introduced elaborately decorated trees that it became a widely popular tradition.

For practicing Christians, Christmas is a holy day. It is the sincere vigil marking the birth of Jesus, son of God and man, the promised Savior. Jesus’s birth is the gift and we remember that by exchanging gifts, but it’s all meant to point to a tiny baby and also to the cross — Jesus’s ultimate act of love for all humanity.

Christmas ornaments are meant to have a deeper, more thoughtful, and sober meaning. They are meant to be a reflection of the Bible stories and the fulfillment of God’s promise through the birth of his Son. Ornaments should not be a temporal and irreligious virtue signal representative of current politics.