This seems to be the usual battle cry around this time each year from television news pundits, preachers, and politicians.
“The War on Christmas!”
What does that mean?
What started this annual war?
Why is it a war?
And why is the war on Christmas?
Who started this war?
And what I want to know is who is prosecuting this so-called war on one of our nation’s most cherished holidays?
Is it a war because Starbucks changed the color of its coffee cups?
Wrote one Arizona pastor: “Starbucks REMOVED CHRISTMAS from their cups because they hate Jesus.”
Another pastor vowed to boycott Starbucks for life over the Christmas cup issue.
Really, this is war?
Over a paper coffee up? Please!
Or could the war have begun when the Walmart greeter first greeted customers with “Happy Holidays” rather than “Merry Christmas.”
Seriously, this is war? The world is going to hell in a hand basket basket!
Look, I understand the “War on drugs” as it applies to our country’s efforts to minimize the flow of dangerous illegal drugs from entering the United States. That makes some sense to us I suppose even though we aren’t winning that war.
But a “War on Christmas?” Please!
The Christmas story, as told in Matthew’s Gospel, reveals that Jesus was born to parents whose relationship was clouded in suspicious scandal given that Mary was thought to have become pregnant while still engaged to Joseph. Joseph even considered dismissing her “quietly” in order to protect her from scandal and shame. But an angel of the Lord intervened and plans were adjusted.
Jesus was then born on the fringe of society; some say in a cave on the outskirts of Bethlehem, while others say in the feeding trough of one of Joseph’s relative’s homes in Bethlehem. The actual location of Jesus’ birth is not important however.
What is important is that he was not born into mainstream society.
We would say that Jesus was born on the wrong side of the tracks in the grip of a horrible social scandal. Every teenage girl who ever got pregnant in high school will relate to Mary’s situation.
The puppet king Herod was maniacal and paranoid and when he was told that the “king of the Jews” had been born he ordered all the Jewish children two years and under born around Bethlehem killed. This compelled Jesus’s parents to flee their homeland and become refugees in a foreign land (Egypt).
Refugees mind you and you can bet they were not legal. One wonders what would have happened had they been refused entry into Egypt.
Now I would suggest that the original Christmas story rises to the level of being considered a “War on Christmas.” Right out of the box Jesus was born in a climate of social mores thought to have been violated and political paranoia based on unfounded fear.
He was not born into nor was he received into the mainstream society of his day. He was born into anything other than a “privileged” society.
I wonder how many folks learning of Jesus’s birth right away began greeting one another with the usual “Merry Christmas” when in fact there was not much to be merry about from Mary and Joseph’s perspective. Or how many folk were sipping coffee from an appropriately decorated Starbucks cup. Silly, right? Well it is silly.
Okay my point is this: The current “War on Christmas” is a joke. It is a joke because if there is a real “War on Christmas” it is the way we celebrate it with our consumer lusts. We have turned Christmas into a commercialized paradise. We have converted Christmas into a national consumer binge that begins earlier and earlier each year. Strangely we hear no complaints about this, do we?
This I would suggest is the real “War on Christmas” and yet folks are upset over the color of coffee cups and hearing “Happy Holidays” at Walmart. Please, can we get spun up over something a bit more important?
Jesus’s birth reminds us of more important things than holiday customs we somehow believe originated in the Bible. Where is the Biblical reference that directs us to drink out of appropriately decorated coffee cups at Starbuck’s and where does it instruct us to say “Merry Christmas”?
Perhaps a good place to begin for those who have jumped on the “War on Christmas” bandwagon is to read the Gospels beyond the birth narratives in Matthew and Luke.
Jesus’s birth, as it turns out, culminated in his death and resurrection and the promise of his return, without which the Christmas story makes absolutely no sense.
In between his birth and resurrection is a much larger story that reveals God’s will for both the world and us. But no one seems to be paying too much attention to this part of the Christmas story. I wonder why?
“War on Christmas?”
Please! We can do better than this folks.
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