Your task is to extract the thesis of an opinionated news article by selecting some of its text segments. The thesis is a summarization of what the author wants to persuade the reader of. Your answer should consist of segments of the given text. Note that you are not allowed to combine different sentences.

Do we really need to cancel Christmas? It's wonderful (and a good thing) to see the new emphasis on"giving over receiving" at Christmas time . It's become a trend this year with so many families because as parents we want to teach kids about generosity . Moms and dads everywhere are using Christmas as an opportunity to get their kids thinking about serving others and giving to the less fortunate , rather than encouraging them to create monstrous Christmas lists describing all the things they want this season . Some parents are even "cancelling" Christmas for their kids, not giving any family members any gifts . But do we really need to cancel Christmas in order to foster a spirit of generosity in our kids? Wednesday I joined Lisa Henderson on "Fox & Friends" to debate this very question . Lisa has "cancelled Christmas" in her Utah home because , she says, her kids have become too entitled,"acting so ungrateful" and "extremely disrespectful." So there will be no presents for Christmas , but , as she writes on her blog Overthebigmooon.com,"There is a good possibility that Santa will be writing them a letter of how proud of them he is and perhaps put a few pieces of hard candy and an orange in their stockings." While I have great respect for what Lisa wants to accomplish , I disagree with her approach . Christmas should begin, not end, at home . We are already under immense pressure to purge Christmas from our culture . First nativity scenes in public places were under attack, now it's Christmas trees . Even saying"Merry Christmas" has taken a back seat to "Happy Holidays." Cancelling Christmas and using letters from Santa to motivate our kids to be generous is not the answer . The answer is in putting the emphasis on the miracle not the material . And here's the good news . Even our gift giving can point to the miracle . So, yes, we give a few gifts to our kids . But we also give many gifts to the less fortunate . For example ,  we've taught our own kids that the gifts we give them at Christmas aren't based on whether they've been bad or good all year . The gifts we give them are free, unearned, underserved gifts , just like the gift of Jesus is a free, unearned, and underserved gift . This is a very tangible, concrete concept for kids to grasp . And when we serve and give to others, we teach our kids what Jesus said in Matthew 25:40 : "Whatever you do for the least of your brothers and sisters, you do for me." So we give gifts to Jesus on his "birthday" by serving and loving and giving to others! This is how parents can infuse real meaning into Christmas -- not by refusing to celebrate it all together . Cancelling Christmas is simply not the key to fostering generosity in our kids . The key to fostering generosity in our kids is by making giving something we do all year round. By making it a lifestyle . And a lifestyle of giving springs from a deep well of gratitude for how Jesus first gave his life for us . We have to be so careful not to teach our kids that Christmas is about doing more, trying harder, and being better to be worthy of gifts . Christmas is about anticipating and celebrating the greatest gift that has already been given-- the unconditional love of God in the birth of Jesus Christ . Our focus shouldn't be on whether or not we have a tree overflowing with gifts, but on whether we have a home overflowing with love . His love . And if that's our starting place , we have a pretty good shot at getting Christmas, and all the 364 other days of the year, right .
It's wonderful (and a good thing) to see the new emphasis on"giving over receiving" at Christmas time

The Charlie Hebdo cartoonists were smarter theologians than the jihadis. Rather disturbingly, one word seems to connect the activity of the Paris terrorists and that of the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists: iconoclasm . I say disturbingly, because pointing out some common ground may be seen as blurring the crucial distinction between murderous bastards and innocent satirists . Nonetheless ,  it strikes me as fascinating that the cartoonists were profoundly iconoclastic in their constant ridiculing of religion (all religions, it must be noted) - yet it is precisely this same ancient tradition of iconoclasm that inspires Jews and Muslims to resist representational art and, in its most twisted pathological form, to attack the offices of a Paris magazine and slaughter those whose only weapon was the pen . So what's the connection? In one sense an iconoclast is someone who refuses the established view of things , who kicks out against cherished beliefs and institutions . Which sounds pretty much like Charlie Hebdo . But the word iconoclast also describes those religious people who refuse and smash representational images, especially of the divine . The second of the Ten Commandments prohibits graven images  - which is why there are no pictures of God in Judaism or Islam . And theologically speaking, the reason they are deeply suspicious of divine representation is because they fear that such representations of God might get confused for the real thing . The danger, they believe, is that we might end up overinvesting in a bad copy, something that looks a lot like what we might think of as god , but which, in reality, is just a human projection . So much better then to smash all representations of the divine . And yet this, of course, is exactly what Charlie Hebdo was doing . In the bluntest, rudest, most scatological and offensive of terms, Charlie Hebdo has been insisting that the images people worship are just human creations - bad and dangerous human creations . And in taking the piss out of such images, they actually exist in a tradition of religious iconoclasts going back as far as Abraham taking a hammer to his father's statues . Both are attacks on representations of the divine . Which is why the terrorists, as well as being murderers, are theologically mistaken in thinking Charlie Hebdo is the enemy . For if God is fundamentally unrepresentable, then any representation of God is necessarily less than God and thus deserves to be fully and fearlessly attacked . And what better way of doing this than through satire, like scribbling a little moustache on a grand statue of God . It's only some Christians that might demur from this logic . For the Christian story (ie Christmas) tells of God coming into the world as a human being . And in doing this the divine takes on a representational form . Jesus, says St Paul, is the image of the invisible God . Without this the whole western tradition of Catholic religious art and eastern tradition of icons is utterly inconceivable . So I can see how some Christians might find disrespectful images of God a la Charlie Hebdo insulting . After all ,  they believe it's possible for images genuinely to capture something of God . But if images can't capture God- and that's the Jewish/Islamic position- then bring on the cartoonists . They should be encouraged to do their worst and disrupt our confidence that what we think of as God bears any resemblance to anything legitimately God-like . They are like Moses bringing down the golden calf . It is the ancient job of the iconoclast . But ,  of course, these terrorists weren't really interested in theology . They thought that Charlie Hebdo's cartoonists were insulting their human tribe, a tribe they called fellow Muslims . And maybe they were . But whatever else was happening, it was the atheist cartoonists who were performing the religious function and the apparently believing Muslims who had forgotten their deepest religious insights . For any representation of the divine that leads people to murder each other deserves the maximum possible disrespect . @giles_fraser .
whatever else was happening, it was the atheist cartoonists who were performing the religious function and the apparently believing Muslims who had forgotten their deepest religious insights

Madonna's cultural appropriation confirms what a cliche she has become. There' s only thing duller than a Twitterstorm , and that's an Instagramstorm . Particularly when said storms feature figures who like to think of themselves as controversial and as deliberately baiting us : Rihanna posing in a clingy burqa at a mosque, Mario Balotelli posting a racist image , and now Madonna doctoring pictures of African and African-American leaders to promote her new album . Really, the only dignified thing to do is to not dignify it with a response, and move on . Who cares if Madonna straps black ropes on the images of dead black rights icons? As Peter Robinson wrote in the Guardian:"It's slightly heartbreaking that Madonna, an artist who made her name through an intuitive grasp of almost every major trend and zeitgeist fluctuation, is so crap at social media." But sometimes a solely jaded response betrays our own complacency, like resigning yourself to the fact that there will always be people who think of racist slurs as banter , or those who think it is just fine to appropriate the symbols of others to give their own tepid existence some edge , or people who still wear bootcut jeans . It's not OK, no matter how persistent and ever- present it is . Even though Madonna has always been controversial , it also seems that as the world around her has got sharper, she has got duller and more derivative . The appropriation that she and others have carried out is nothing new ; we're just noticing it more . That's because those who are piggybacking on others' journeys do not only have more channels to flaunt their cluelessness and sense of entitlement (Iggy Azalea, walk away from Twitter) but they are also being called out on it more . Whether it is usurping religion - crucifixes and nun habits are passe now; it's niqabs on naked bodies  - keep up - homosexuality or now minority rights , Madonna is a manifestation of how privilege feeds off the authenticity of "struggle" . This is a double plundering that leads to further marginalisation : the dominant narrative will oppress you, then co-opt you, and then weave you into your own tiny little section of the tapestry . Some would argue that slavery and segregation ended long ago (well, segregation in the US in the 60s and apartheid in South African in the 90s, so not that long ago) . But that doesn't mean white people can now happily vandalise the cultural and historical totems of a minority's struggle as part of some universal poster for the white western narrative of overcoming and learning from our mistakes . Imagine a pop artist using the recent CIA torture as part of their campaign - perhaps showing dead Arab personalities being waterboarded . No? Too soon? Well , when it comes to certain issues , it will always too soon . Of course ,  the charitable position is that Madonna, or to a different extent, Iggy Azalea, are not doing this with any high degree of self-awareness or design - they might see all contemporary culture as equal-access human heritage that they can dip into and sample as a vehicle for their talent . They would be right to some extent , but the sad fact is that these modern iterations of minority culture that they are sampling all arose from suffering and oppression rather than from a series of tortured geniuses in drawing rooms across Europe . Yes, there are spaces where our common mix of religious, sexual and racial legacies intermingle - gloriously, sometimes . But that is usually an uncurated, spontaneous thing, not a cynical shopping list . To put it simply , edginess comes from just that : being on the edge . Ironically, all Madonna and her ilk's desperate antics to appear so only confirm that they are, in fact, utterly comfortable and mainstream . Cultural appropriation is now the standard default of the unoriginal . It is a common and predictable template , where one becomes a cliche in trying to avoid being a cliche because you have nothing new to offer - something Madonna would surely be mortified by .

Who cares if Madonna straps black ropes on the images of dead black rights icons?

