![\"war](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/766\/2017\/11\/war-on-christmas-2.jpg\")
<\/p>\nToday is Black Friday, the unfortunate beginning of the Christmas shopping season. Apparently in service to the holiday spirit of capitalism, some stores opened in yesterday\u2019s evening hours, forcing their employees to interrupt their Thanksgivings in pursuit of increased sales. It is also the beginning of this year\u2019s skirmish in the much-hyped \u201cWar on Christmas.\u201d<\/p>\n
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This is a \u201cwar\u201d allegedly being waged by all sorts of non-Christians in this country, a war whose continuing battlefields include the apparent prohibition against saying \u201cMerry Christmas\u201d during the holiday season. This prohibition is incited by politically correct liberals, the mainstream media, atheists, persons of faith who are not Christians, and anyone who enjoys persecuting American Christians, apparently the most oppressed majority in human history.<\/p>\n
A decade ago, when President Trump was still just a mere candidate for the highest office in the land, he promised that if he were elected President, everyone would be saying \u201cMerry Christmas\u201d once again, in stores, on streets, in dens of liberal iniquity where only \u201cHappy Holidays\u201d has been allowed for years . . . and he\u2019s still promising it. About this time last yearMere weeks after he was elected the first time, Trump gave a speech at the \u201cValues Voter Summit,\u201d a conservative Christian political action group whose support he enjoyed during the 2016 Presidential campaign and still enjoys. In his typical rambling, grammatically challenged, stream-of-consciousness style, he threw out chunks of red meat to those assembled\u2014sort of like the rolls of paper towels that he pitched into the crowd when he visited Hurricane Maria-ravaged Puerto Rico<\/p>\n
The American Founders invoked our Creator four times in the Declaration of Independence \u2014 four times . . .<\/strong><\/p>\n I pledged that, in a Trump administration, our nation\u2019s religious heritage would be cherished, protected, and defended like you have never seen before.\u00a0 That\u2019s what\u2019s happening.\u00a0 That\u2019s what\u2019s happening.\u00a0 You see it every day.\u00a0 You\u2019re reading it . . .<\/strong><\/p>\n We are stopping cold the attacks on Judeo-Christian values.\u00a0 (Applause.)\u00a0 Thank you.\u00a0 Thank you very much.<\/strong>\u00a0 [I think he learned this from Elvis]<\/p>\n And above all else, we know this:\u00a0 In America, we don\u2019t worship government \u2014 we worship God.\u00a0 (Applause.)\u00a0 Inspired by that conviction, we are returning moral clarity to our view of the world and the many grave challenges we face.<\/strong><\/p>\n And something I\u2019ve said so much during the last two years, but I\u2019ll say it again as we approach the end of the year.\u00a0 You know, we\u2019re getting near that beautiful Christmas season that people don\u2019t talk about anymore.\u00a0 (Laughter.)\u00a0 They don\u2019t use the word \u201cChristmas\u201d because it\u2019s not politically correct.\u00a0 You go to department stores, and they\u2019ll say, \u201cHappy New Year\u201d and they\u2019ll say other things.\u00a0 And it will be red, they\u2019ll have it painted, but they don\u2019t say it.\u00a0 Well, guess what?\u00a0 We\u2019re saying \u201cMerry Christmas\u201d again.\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n This last promise was met with a standing ovation worthy of a 60s Beatles performance, complete with sign-waving, screaming, and probably some swooning.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve lived for almost seven decades,and unless my memory is failing more than I think it is, this \u201cMerry Christmas\u201d vs. \u201cHappy Holidays\u201d business was not a \u201cthing\u201d in my early years. I would remember if it had been. I was raised in the most Christian of all possible atmospheres, taught about the evils of godless secularism and its insidious ways of infecting our culture from my earliest days in Sunday School, and learned to be vigilantly on guard against even the slightest affront to Jesus (since he apparently has very thin skin and a fragile ego). But no one ever taught me that saying \u201cHappy Holidays\u201d is a direct attack on all that is good, Christian, and American. That\u2019s probably a good thing, because over the past few years I\u2019ve paid attention to which phrase seems most natural to me when greeting or saying farewell to people this time of year\u2014and \u201cHappy Holidays\u201d wins by a large margin. Let me count the reasons why.<\/p>\n The most obvious reason to say \u201cHappy Holidays,\u201d of course, is simply that there are many more holidays going on during the holiday season than Christmas; several of these holidays are either secular or central to religious traditions other than Christianity. Saying \u201cHappy Holidays\u201d is simply inclusive and polite.<\/p>\n But as a Christian, I have better reasons not to say \u201cMerry Christmas,\u201d reasons that reflect my refusal to align myself with a surface level Christianity that is light-years distant from my own faith. As noted earlier, the \u201cMerry Christmas\u201d debate is part of the false narrative that Christians are under attack in this country\u2014despite no supporting evidence. If your faith is threatened or undermined by the failure of others to say \u201cMerry Christmas,\u201d may I respectfully submit that your faith is extraordinarily fragile.<\/p>\n Note that in his comments, Trump places the offending failure to say \u201cMerry Christmas\u201d in a department store\u2014capitalism and buying frenzies are Americans\u2019 favorite holiday liturgies. And Christians happily buy into the narrative, as if hearing your favorite phrase is the sum total of what Christmas means to a person of Christian faith. Curiously, but perhaps not surprisingly, Jesus didn\u2019t come up very often at the Values Voter Summit, except tangentially, in Trump\u2019s pledge that everyone will once again say \u201cMerry Christmas\u201d at our shopping centers\u2014where we revere the one born in a manger by lining up for holiday sales.<\/p>\n Christianity is difficult and challenging, because it is supposed to be. It is contrary to our crudest instincts and runs counter to our basest inclinations. Marilynne Robinson points out that \u201cChristian ethics go steadfastly against the grain of what we consider human nature. The first will be last; to him who asks give; turn the other cheek; judge not.\u201d In response to the current tendency of many American Christians to go tribal in their litmus tests for who is Christian enough, she continues \u201cHowever sound our credentials seem, we have it on good authority that the prostitutes and sinners might well enter heaven before us.\u201d That\u2019s fine, because such folks will probably be a great deal more fun to hang out with for eternity than people whose Christian faith is strengthened by how many times they hear \u201cMerry Christmas\u201d at the mall as they worship the divine infant while running up their credit card bills. Happy holidays to all!<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Today is Black Friday, the unfortunate beginning of the Christmas shopping season. Apparently in service to the holiday spirit of capitalism, some stores opened in yesterday\u2019s evening hours, forcing their employees to interrupt their Thanksgivings in pursuit of increased sales. It is also the beginning of this year\u2019s skirmish in the much-hyped \u201cWar on Christmas.\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2938,"featured_media":18906,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,22,35,40,48,57,75,579],"tags":[759,169,221,242,388],"class_list":["post-35621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-christianity","category-christmas","category-faith","category-god","category-human-nature","category-jesus","category-politics","category-technology","tag-capitalism","tag-christianity","tag-faith","tag-god","tag-politics"],"yoast_head":"\n