Zeal For Truth

It is inevitable every year that there are massive complaints from Christians about God, Jesus and all the other Christian traditions being either watered down or removed entirely from Christmas, especially in the public sector. Christian teachers, parents and students resent how the public schools now practice “holiday” events rather than Christmas ones. Citizens and public employees oppose the near complete secularization of the holiday in courthouses, libraries and other civic buildings.

But what in the world did we expect? Did people believe, when they infused a Christian tradition with secular society, that the rest of the country would conform their lifestyle to the holiday rather than conform the holiday to their lifestyle? Did Christians sincerely believe that, despite the complete failure to merge religion into secular society in other areas, Christmas would actually catch on?

Consider the state institutions of marriage or public schools. Christians lament about the “godless” state of both of them - public schools have abandoned prayer, bible instruction and Christian holidays while marriage has recently been augmented by civil unions and homosexual marriage.

In the schools, for example, Christians were a large proponent of public schooling - both out of a desire to provide education for the poor, and to convert all those idolatrous Catholics in their fancy-pants private schools. But secular society, and rightfully so, is not going to tolerate Christian institutions ramming doctrine down their kids throat by force. Eventually, there is going to be a backlash, and their was. The problem is not that “God got kicked out of public schools” it is that we put him there in the first place.

Likewise, unless the government gets out of holidays altogether (which seems to be the direction things are moving) then we should not be surprised to see Jews and Muslims wanting equal state acknowledgment of their religious celebrations.

We Christians need to learn that we cannot, and should not, attempt to force our values on the rest of society. Jesus was so effective because, rather than overthrow Herod and establish a new Christ oriented government, he taught, instructed, exampled and helped people in a private, non-coercive way, so as to allow them to choose to follow him. Every single time we inject our values into secular apparatuses, we restrict people’s ability to chose, bearing the fruit of forced (false) conversions, resentment and rejection.

It’s a wonderful thing to celebrate Christmas, and it is great to demonstrate a holiday spirit as we go about our business. Let’s chose to let go of the “war on Christmas” - its a war we can never win, and one we never should have started in the first place.