Steve Brown's Christmas Blog

Below was taken from Steve Brown's blog at http://www.stevebrownetc.com/
I love Steve Brown - not only does he have a fabulous radio ministry, but his dry wit (and honesty) are so refreshing!
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I can't believe it's December again! Didn't we just "do" Christmas a couple of months ago?
Christmas! That means I have to get out the tree and the decorations. If I had known that this was coming around so fast, I would have never taken them down from last year. It would be like not making up the bed in the morning because you're going to have to unmake it in the evening.

Christmas means that sad people will be sadder, joyful people more joyful, busy people busier, religious people more religious...

...and it means war.
Yeah, war!

The "Prince of Peace" calls every Christian to man the ramparts and to prepare for battle against the forces of evil who would reduce "Merry Christmas" to "Happy Holidays" and remove any reference to Christ in the public square beginning with Christmas.

It's called the "War on Christmas" and John Gibson's book, The War on Christmas: How the Liberal Plot to Ban the Sacred Christian Holiday is Worse Than You Thought, gives the horrifying details. He, of course, is right.
Annie Gaylor, co-founder of the Freedom From Religion Foundation says that the "real" reason for the season is winter solstice. They have a plaque that reads: "At this season of the winter solstice may reason prevail. There are no gods, no devils, no angels, no heaven or hell. There is only our natural world. Religion is but myth and superstition that hardens hearts and enslaves minds."

A couple of years ago, Tom Piatak, wrote in The American Conservative: "The result of sanitizing Christmas is now within sight: an undistinguished, uninspiring public celebration, devoid of religious or cultural significance or indeed of beauty, with nothing left but multiculturalists pap and tawdry commercialism."

Do you know how I feel about all of that?
I don't care!
I'm not anybody's mother and, frankly, I don't care what unbelievers do about Christmas. I'm not their boss, their judge or their leader. They can dance naked around a fire celebrating winter solstice if they want to, say "Happy Holidays" to their hearts' content and ignore God whenever they want. I just don't care. I don't even know their names.

My not caring may be because I'm tired; it could have something to do with being old; it could be just my "default" cynicism directed at pagans who are offended by the name of Christ and also at those who sell books and get ratings faking anger directed at pagans who are offended by the name of Christ.
But I really think my not caring has to do with Jesus who said, "Leave the dead to bury their own dead. But as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God" (Luke 9:60).

When I said I don't care, that's not exactly true.

The Christmas season is a grand and glorious time to offend a pagan. I take perverse delight in saying "Merry Christmas" to pagans, in asking Target store managers why they are offended by the Salvation Army, and in handing out "Jesus is the Reason for the Season" bumper stickers to my humanist friends. That's not because I'm a "Christian solider." It's because...well...um...I just like to irritate.

Now that I think about it, there's another reason it isn't exactly true for me to say that I don't care. I think I just don't get upset with "an ant crawling up an elephant's leg with murder on his mind." It's sort of like the fly, sitting on the cow's tail, that said, "I'm leaving you now," to which the cow replied, "Oh, really, I didn't even know you were there."
Paul said in 1 Timothy that Jesus Christ is "the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords" (6:15) and to the Philippians he wrote that the time was coming when "every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father" (2:10-11).

Take Jesus out of Christmas? Are you crazy?

The King goes wherever he wants and does whatever he wants whenever and however he wants. The Freedom From Religion Foundation folks are dreaming. There is nothing sillier than the growl of a toothless tiger...except for maybe powerless people pontificating and not even knowing how powerless they are. They don't know it, but they really don't get a vote and I find it hard to get my underwear in knots over toothless tigers or powerless people.
As I've written the above, I've found myself with another feeling too. I'm sort of surprised because what I wrote was about all that I had planned to say.

Do you know what else I'm feeling? I'm feeling a profound sadness. Maybe that's one of the reasons I'm such a Scrooge at Christmas (it's a real disconnect, by the way, if a Scrooge like me looks like Santa Claus). When I listen to, as it were, toothless tigers growl, there is something so heartrending and depressing about it that I can hardly stand it.
Do you remember what C.S. Lewis said about Narnia in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe? He said that Narnia, under the power of the White Witch, Jadis, was a place where it was "always winter and never Christmas." In fact, Lewis had an alternative title for The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. He was going to title it The Hundred Year Winter.

A hundred years with snow, ice, dark and cold...and no Christmas.
Is that sad or what?
That's the profound pathos of those who want Christ out of Christmas. Without him, there is no Christmas. There is just the cold, hollow, empty silence of meaninglessness and hopelessness.

Think what it would be like to be guilty and have no one to forgive you, to be thankful and have no one to thank, to be afraid and have no one to go to, to be lost in the universe with no reality but your lostness, and to be mortal and have nothing to which to look forward except the grave. How heartbreaking to have no flag to follow, no King to whom to pay homage but yourself, and no reason for the life that you've been given.
If there's no God, there's no value. If there's no value, there's no meaning. If there's no meaning, then you're a turnip to eventually return to the soil from which you came.
Turnip types don't celebrate Christmas. And because their state is so incredibly sad, they don't want anyone else to either.

The old hymn lyrics come to mind:
Let those refuse to sing who never knew our God;but children of the heavenly King may speak their joys abroad.
In other words, don't get angry. You don't have to fight in a war that's been over for two thousand years. Shed a tear and say a prayer.

Then, in the name of Christ, get down! Celebrate, party, sing, rejoice and laugh because...
"The Word became flesh and dwelt among us!"