Christmas: how offended should you be?

By Dennis Colby

This is traditionally the time of year when we Christians expect to be offended by the creeping assault on all things Christian by an insidious secularist conspiracy led by such arch-Leftist organizations as the American Civil Liberties Union and Macy's. Our annual hypersensitivity to all things relating to winter holidays has become as joyous a part of the season as caroling, family gatherings, and passing on awful gifts to your distant relatives.

Lately, though, it seems some Christians have lost their taste for Yule battle. A number of them have proclaimed that "the Christmas wars are over" because of things like Wal-Mart once again using the greeting "Merry Christmas" after replacing it in previous years with "Victory to World Atheism." All over the country, we're told, Americans have reached reasonable compromises on Nativity scenes, holiday pageants and the distribution of candy canes with Bible verses printed on them. The fight’s over, they say, and we can enjoy our holidays in peace.

Our Founding Fathers had a word for such people: "Appease-o-crats" (alternately, "Rhode Islanders").

The fact is, Christmas has never been more in danger. The appearance of a truce is a facade, an exercise in what Muhammad Ali called the "rope a dope,” except now the rope is Amazon.com's Christmas Store, and the dope is America.

Don't be fooled by the dearth of isolated school districts suspending eight-year-olds for wearing red and green sweaters to class. The anti-Christmas crusaders aren't defeated; like their spiritual soul mates Osama bin Laden and Walter Mondale, they're simply waiting, biding their time and waiting to strike (perhaps in caves, although in Mondale's case Minnesota is more likely). As I write this, there are people working overtime to ensure that next year it's illegal to go to Midnight Mass, and that the federal
government will rename Christmas "Global Warming Awareness Day."

Here are some more, seemingly benign elements of the new, secularist holiday. Be prepared to respond.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS: What "Workers of the World, Unite" was to the Reds, "Happy Holidays" is to the Christmasophobes. This is their insane battle cry, their bloodthirsty pledge to destroy all you hold dear. When someone says this to you this month, the only proper way to respond is with a lawsuit.

SEASON'S GREETINGS: Really, comrade? And just what "season" are you using as a pretext to extend your oh-so-inclusive "greetings" to me? Winter Solstice? Kwanzaa? Or is it perhaps - Mao-Tse Tung's birthday (Dec. 26)?

HAPPY CHANUKAH: The people using this want to convince Christians that the letter "C" is pronounced like the letter "H." It's not clear how this fits into the gradual secularist plot to overthrow Christmas.

SANTA CLAUS: Otherwise known as the New Deal in human form. Just like that freedom-strangling program, Santa wants to give you something for nothing: instead of pumping crucial consumer dollars into our economy, this foreign-born spendthrift will give you gifts free of charge, hurting retailers and making people more dependent on the government. Oh, and here's the best part: he's going to trespass on private property to do it. It's time to put this creep where he belongs: in prison.

WINTER WONDERLAND: The New Jersey Supreme Court would love this song: An unmarried couple, probably direct from fornicating, decide they want to get "married," so they build a snowman, pretend he's a clergyman, and have the sick parody of a wedding ceremony out in the wilderness. True fact the mainstream media doesn't want you to know: Human-snowpeople marriages have already surpassed heterosexual unions in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

CHRISTMAS TREES: It's a little-known fact that Christmas trees were first introduced into the United States by Jimmy Carter in the mid-1970s in a feverish bid to shift the focus of the holiday from God to vegetation. Despite such sinister beginnings, every year millions of supposed Christians actually invite this pagan idol into their homes and drape it with colorful lights and sugary morsels (the tree, not Jimmy Carter).

MANGER SCENES: The Christmas haters would like nothing more than for us to believe the preposterous story that Jesus was born in a manger. Does that sound like something God would do? Sure it does—if you learned theology from a hippie strumming an acoustic guitar and telling you the real meaning of the Ten Commandments is "be yourself." Jesus was actually born in a luxury hotel with a heated pool and HBO, according to scholars cited on the Internet's most reliable news source (Crackpotwiki).

THE NATIVITY STORY: Now that I think about it, the whole Nativity story is full of problems. The whole thing sends dangerously mixed messages about illegal immigration. Jesus' family weren't the only ones hopping borders; what about the Magi? These Persian elitists waltz into the country and buy their way out of trouble with a little gold, frankincense and myrrh? Maybe we should keep this story from our children until we get the country fenced in. Otherwise they might get the wrong idea.

Dennis Colby is a freelance writer in Connecticut.

Comments

[Ellie]

Suppose Christmas were outlawed completely. Do you think Christianity would come tumbling down? Those who get so exercised by the threats to public religious displays should save their energy for threats to the environment, to the poor, and to the oppressed. The holiday does very little to encourage Christian belief and behavior, in my estimation.

From years of teaching Church School classes, I am convince that the Nativity pageants and programs gave children just enough information about Jesus to make them believe, after they "graduated" from Sunday School, that they knew everything there was to know. We wound up with an idea of Jesus as a perpetual baby who never grows up in the popular mind. When those same people are ready for some serious spiritual development they look elsewhere, believing that they have already "tried" Christianity.

I have been getting Christmas cards that say "Happy Holidays" all of my life. I always thought it was shorthand for Merry hristmas and Happy New Year. I am still not offended. My family celebrates an American Christmas in the stores and at communal meals. but we celebrate the incarnation every single day of the year.