A Fool and his Words are Soon Parted

Putting Christ back in Christmas December 20, 2005

Recently, there’s been a great deal of talk about whether “Happy Holidays” is, in some subversive way destroying the celebration of Jesus’ birth, aka Christmas. For the life of me, I can’t see it, and this is why.

First, there’s the question of whether or not Christmas, as celebrated in my youth (the mid 1960’s), somehow brought more glory and honor to the birth of Jesus than current modes of celebration. Oddly enough, I still remember the way we celebrated Christmas back then.

In the 60’s, my parents (who were in the overly-broad “middle class”) introduced me to Santa Claus, a highly-decorated Christmas tree, snowmen and reindeer, all alongside a nativity scene and a Christmas Eve prayer service. Should go back to those golden days of yesteryear?

From what I can recall, the only things that appear to have changed in the intervening years are: Americans (including Southern Baptists) are spending a more money than ever on Christmas toys, and our Christmas programs are bigger budget productions.

On the other side of the equation, why do we (Christians) get so worked up over whether or not a corporate giant like Wal-Mart puts “Happy Holidays” in front of their stores instead of “Merry Christmas”? Do we fear that the world is likely to forget the birth of Jesus? Is that because we, as Christians, do so poorly in being Christ-like, and therefore don’t remind the world of the Savior?

It seems that what we want is for the world to act like they believe what we do, but we don’t really care whether they truly believe it or not. After all, if we cared, we’d be honoring the birth of Jesus by giving gifts to “the least of these,” instead of showering each other with them.

Right?