Merry Christmas

The culture wars are again in high gear as we get closer to Christmas… or to the holidays. And that's the issue. There was a time when Christians worried that others were trying to take Christ out of Christmas; now the fear is that they are trying to take Christmas out of the season entirely. It seems that more and more the generic "Happy Holidays" or "Season's Greetings" are to be preferred over "Merry Christmas." But that, of course, is only the beginning.

• The national Christmas tree has now officially been dubbed a "Holiday Tree."
• A school in Texas asked children to bring white, not red and green, napkins to a holiday party
• Annapolis, Maryland, calls its evergreen boughs and ribbons on public buildings the "Hanging of the Greens," not "Christmas decorations."
• I even heard someone suggest (with tongue in cheek) that Nativity scenes should be called "The Holiday Homeless Family."

What do I think about all of this? I think these people are just behind the times. I was brought up to believe that the right way to approach Christmas was to avoid all religious references. The Bible doesn't authorize a winter festival; we're not commanded to observe Jesus' birthday. So we avoided the religious part of Christmas.. We did not use religious themes in decorations, we chose Christmas cards that featured snow or fireplaces rather than nativity scenes, and we sang about Frosty and Rudolph rather than Jesus. And we never, ever mentioned the birth of Jesus in church during the month of December! In other words, we were politically correct before political correctness was cool!

We meant well. But as our world has gotten more and more secular, I am so glad that we have rethought our view of Christmas. Our children are not going to have nativity plays or sing Christmas carols in school. I'm glad that we are free to let them do both in church. Saying "Merry Christmas," sending Christmas cards with nativity scenes, and finding other ways to honor Jesus during this time of the year says something to people around us. It says that we don't buy into the secularization of the public square. It says that Jesus remains the center of our world all the time, even around the holidays. Merry Christmas!