the war on Christmas

I think that there is something to this “war on Christmas” thing. It is an inappropriate name for what is happening, but it is real. As we all know (and if you don’t, then look at “a Christian nation” below) freedom of religion in this country has generally meant that you could adopt whatever form of Christianity you like. But we are currently taking the next giant step and extending that wondrous principle to ALL religions. [It is very unfortunate that the next religion (both in time, numbers, and in its religious proximity – monotheism - to Christianity) has a strain that thinks murdering us is a wonderful thing to do. But that is a temporary problem.] The trend is toward opening up America to all of the other peoples and granting “free exercise” to all of the other religions of the world. That is where Christmas comes in. It is a religious holiday. It is hard to say that you have religious freedom if you don’t have religious equality, and it is hard to say you have religious equality if some of the religions have governmentally recognized holidays and others do not. What would you think if May 15 was a national holiday to celebrate the day on which John the Baptist visited Joseph Smith in 1829 which led to the creation of Mormonism. Would you consider a country which had Ramadan – the Muslim holy month – as a national holiday, but did not have Christmas, to be practicing freedom of religion?
So how does this shake out? Well I don’t know. Probably you don’t suddenly quit having the Christmas holiday. (Although we did get along without a Federal Christmas Holiday for almost a hundred years. It did not start until 1870.) One possible solution would be to secularize the religious holidays that you have. As I understand it, the Catholic Church chose the time to celebrate Christmas, because it coincided with certain pagan holidays. Perhaps that process could be reversed. How would you do that? Well you could start by having people say “Happy Holidays” instead of Merry Christmas. If you want to call it Christmas fine, if you don’t, then that is fine too. Well the more non-Christians we have the more our institutions will try to accommodate them. If there are two stores in front of you and one of them is flaunting a religion that you do not believe and the other is celebrating a nondenominational holiday, then I think you would be inclined to go with the one which is not pushing a religion at you. So in a sense it will be a process of reducing the role of Christianity in the country. We have for some time been reducing the role of Christianity - in the schools for example. The process continues toward a broader freedom of religion. But war is such a harsh word. Perhaps the “secularization of the holiday season.” Nah, Huckabee will never go for that.
So should a thoughtful Christian be concerned about what O’Reilly sees as a War on Christmas?
Not if they believe in the first amendment.
Merry Christmas
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