There was a time, not so long ago, where the now commonplace practice of watching sports on Sunday would have been unthinkable in the United States.
But, with the secularization of Western culture, Sunday football games have become a hallowed tradition among Americans, sometimes seeming to supersede the traditional religious obligations of that holy day.
And now, as reported in The Wall Street Journal, the NFL has decided, in direct contradiction of its earlier statements, to schedule at least one game for Christmas 2024, despite Christmas this year falling on a Wednesday, generally an off-day for the NFL.
As the Journal noted, in recent years, the NFL has been trying to establish a presence on Christmas, perhaps in an attempt to make football an integral part of the holiday as they have with Thanksgiving.
In past years, the NFL tended to avoid any football related activities on Christmas.
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But now, thanks to strong ratings for Christmas day games over the previous three years, the NFL has clearly seen the potential of making the day another cash cow for them.
As Hans Schroeder, the NFL’s executive vice president of media distribution, told the Journal, “The fans clearly spoke. There’s a big demand.”
The NFL has even pondered playing on Tuesdays, in the event that a Christmas fell on that day, despite the historical absence of football on Tuesdays.
But having games played on Tuesday and Wednesday is a punishing schedule for the players, who, the Journal noted, have already expressed their displeasure over the quick turnaround required for Thursday games.
Should the NFL play on Christmas?
However, the NFL has indicated that the teams playing on Christmas will be teams that played the previous Saturday, matching the Sunday-Thursday turnaround players are used to.
NBC Sports’ story on the NFL going back on their previous statements even sarcastically referred to the NFL as “the Grinch,” telling its readers that “they are who we thought they were” — greedy and dishonest.
How did the day celebrating Jesus’ birth become nothing but another opportunity to generate obscene amounts of money for the NFL?
Unfortunately, the NFL has simply followed the general cultural trend in twisting their schedule to play on Christmas this year.
Honestly, most companies would probably do the same, or something similar, if they thought it would benefit them financially.
And most people wouldn’t see much of a problem with it.
Indeed, the kind of attitude the NFL exhibited towards one of the holiest days of the year has become but one symptom of the societal loss of reverence towards Christ in modern Western culture.
Sunday sporting events only became common in the first half of the 20th century, and only came to dominate the cultural landscape beginning in the 1930’s.
As explained by the Philadelphia Athletic Historical Society, successful lobbying attempts from sports organizations at the time pressured lawmakers to relax Blue Laws in major cities like Philadelphia and Chicago.
And that, subsequently, led to the dominance of Sunday sports (be they football or baseball) in American culture today.
A mere 100 years ago, having thousands of people working on a Sunday to bring us our baseball or football games would have been unthinkable.
But, now that American sports fans have been desensitized to Sunday night football and other sporting events on Sundays, the NFL has seen the monetary opportunities inherent in encroaching on Christmas.
Knowing the bottomless greed of the current NFL, they probably would weasel their way into an Easter game — if they could get the scheduling to work out for them.
