It seems the gringo media circus is putting a new act under the big top. They haven’t stopped trying to tell their customers what the Mayans believe, but now the message is changing. For years the marketing message has been ‘the Mayans predict the world’s end in 2012,’ and now, just a few weeks before the delayed release of ‘2012,’ the much hyped Columbia Pictures film that fits a tsunami, earthquakes and an alien invasion into a 30 second trailer, they’re switching gears! The Associate Press story ‘Mayans are sick of 2012’ was all over the internet, on msnbc, Huffington Post and others. I like Arianna Huffington. I think she has a good heart, and doesn’t mind letting people see that she’s searching, even if they don’t want her as governor, but she could have looked at this a little closer before printing it word for word.
Basically, the story says that Mayans are sick of 2012, “fed up,” while quoting gringos like Lawrence Joseph who are now saying that with or without the Mayans the world might end. So now we find ourselves in the middle of a gringo paranoia marketing war. The interesting thing is that both camps are basing their arguments on what they claim Mayans believe, as though their own gringo tradition or theology is so worn out or discredited that it’s not part of the story. I think that’s sad for them. They should think about Christmas. Many good Christians feel sick about what the gringo marketing machines have done with their Christmas: the hype, the pressure to buy and consume, and the push to make their children want to find toy guns or violent video games, and oversexed dolls and girls’ clothes, under the tree. Does this make Christians sick of Christmas, or “fed up” with the birth of their Christ? For the Maya, December 21 2012 is a religious day. To say they are “fed up” with 2012 is like saying Christians are “fed up” with Christmas. They may not approve of Mr. Joseph and the marketing machine, but that does not mean the Maya will not observe their day of religious transformation.
