Relevant Podcast & The Supposed "War on Christmas"

For the last several years, Relevant Magazine has been a regular visit for me and this week they have some really interesting discussion on their podcast. In particular, the Relevant crew brings up the issue of Christians freaking out about retail stores taking Jesus out of Christmas, replacing "Merry Christmas" with "Happy Holidays." This season it seems to be everywhere. Okay, so maybe it's just everywhere over at Fox News.

In the Christian community, quotes like this are commonplace:
“My personal solution to this attack on my inherent constitutional rights, is to boycott all businesses that refuse to acknowledge that Christmas is a ‘national’ holiday. Those unbelievably huge retailers who refuse to reference the Christmas season need to feel the impact of the Christian community. Money talks!” — Rich (Harrisburg, PA)

This kind of attitude and tone is encouraged by our brothers and sisters in Christ who are promoting a "culture war" (e.g., The Dob and Jer Bear.) Very problematic. I'm sorry, but most Americans do not have a faith in the Jesus of the Christian Christmas. Therefore, it seems pretty natural for department stores to say "Happy Holidays" so as to include as many people of different faiths (or of no faith) as they can without alienating their customers. Afterall, the purpose of Target and Wal Mart is NOT to promote Christianity. It's to make money! Yet the first reaction of “American Christendom” is to lash out as though retail stores are going to single-handedly take down the God of creation Himself.

I appreciate Cameron Strang’s sensitivity on the Relevant podcast when he points out that, if he were to have a Jewish friend, he wouldn’t mind saying “Happy Holidays” to include his friend, thus preserving the friendship with potentially redemptive results in the future.

Christians have been called to be agents of change in enemy territory, not to protest the enemy. The problem is that sometimes Christ-followers mistakenly identify the enemy (i.e., retail stores), expecting the darkness to be less dark. Worse yet, American Christians too often use their supposed “constitutional rights” (see above quote) to force their faith on those who don’t have Jesus, but desperately need to see examples of Christ-like character so absent in the defensive culture-war movement.

Granted, there are those who want to wage some kind of all-out war on Christianity and even take Santa out of the picture (which would be fine for the promoters and gatekeepers of American Christendom) as a result of a ridiculous obsession with political correctness. However, these voices have a stronger bark than they do bite. And even if they did begin to move the zeitgeist, God would not go away and the real enemy would still have only defeat to look forward to in the future.

One more quote from the Fox News article that I think is on the more profound side of the issue:
“War on Christmas? Are you kidding me? There are more pressing issues in the world that need to brought up. If someone is in need of a ‘war,’ why not hunger, crime, social injustice, or racism?" — Sophia

Big shout out to Sophia.

(And by the way, Xmas is NOT an attempt to take Christ out of Christmas.)

Categories: culture, God, church