No War on Christmas--Or on Christians

With “Merry Christmas” disappearing from shops, Nativity scenes and carols banned from the public square, “Savior”, “God” and “ holy” being removed from school "Holiday” programs, and Christmas Tree diluted to the more inclusive, “Holiday Tree”, there's no doubt that Christmas is under fire from the p.c. crowd.

Maybe we need a visit from Marley's Ghost - I just hope the job isn't permanent.

When Dickens wrote, “A Christmas Carol”, Scrooge took timeless form as a lonely, greedy, anti-social, sacrilegious, tightwad. He wouldn’t give a farthing to feed the poor or help a family with a crippled child. He thought Christmas just a lot of humbug.

Our current crop of Ebeneezers not only see Christmas as humbug, but as divisive, culturally insensitive and intolerant humbug. Progressive humanists and relativists, who, like Scrooge, often see things that aren’t really there and ignore others that are.

For instance, they see a Constitution that excludes Christmas carols or displays on public property, but includes the right to kill the innocent, unborn. They fret and litigate over the most trivial environmental pollutants, but care nothing about the degrading pollution that pours out of the glowing tube and into the hearts and minds of our children. They worship the environment, but never it’s creator. The condition of their body is paramount, but they think nothing of the condition of their soul. They revel in the glitzy facade of our society and notice not the stench of moral decay beneath.

And, like miser Scrooge, well heeled secularists have amassed the "stuff" of life - rather than the essence of living.

To these modern “humbuggers” God has become irrelevant. His absolute morality and eternal truth inconvenient and threatening to their agenda. They would like to see God consigned to the history's dustbin or at least, confined to the margins of society - shut away in the same dark closet where we once kept immorality and pornography before the “entertainment industry” beamed it into our homes, schools and universities.

To them, Christmas has become an uncomfortable reminder - a specter from Dickens’ - pointing an empty sleeve to what is to come should they not mend their ways. And, unlike Scrooge, who merely turned away and squirmed beneath his bedding, wishing the ghosts gone, they seek relief from their fears through litigation, denial and judicial whimsy.

As the bell tolls midnight one imagines them muttering, “God is simply a subjective personal deity, different morality and values for each of us. God is merely whatever I perceive him to be. No, no, this specter of God - He can’t be real... little things effect the senses, a slight disorder of the stomach, an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of underdone potato. I’ll just pull these covers over my head and call the American Civil Liberties Union - they’ll make Him go away.”

Merry Christmas to all and to all a Good Night!

R.L. SCHAEFER of CA 1:51PM December 21, 2010