Your faithful correspondent has been, once again and for another year, hearing about "The War On Christmas." And to tell the truth, he's getting pretty darn tired of it. Not because there is not a "war on Christmas", but because every year for the past thirty years there has been a bit of screaming and robe tearing about a "war on Christmas." with the thought that if Christians protest enough about it there will be a "Christmas peace" in which a Christian can wish a Merry Christmas to a Sikh at the local 7-11 and not get the hairy eyeball. A "Christmas peace", if there will ever come one, will be like the Christmas truces during the war in Vietnam; an tacit agreement will be made and then one side will break the truce because that side realizes that a state of comfort on the other side makes a soft target and is thus easy to attack. A sleeping man is easier to attack than an armed man on watch.
But what is more troublesome to this writer is the implication put forth by the "War on Christmas" worriers is that Christianity is the default state of the nations in the West. For sure, it could be that most people in Europe and the Americas were believing Christians, or cultural Christians. Believing Christians means those who actually believe the tenants and teachings of the New Testament, and who attend church and read the Bible. A cultural Christian is a person who holds to Christian morality without really believing in Christianity. The village atheist was an oddball. The person who claimed he or she was a Buddhist or Hindu was considered a person who was pretty much akin to a spiritualist; a person who had fallen victim to exoticism. The person who identified as a Muslim was considered as a bit of a savage who had neither the discipline to be an Orthodox Jew or the sense of gratefulness to be a Christian.
Times have changed a lot since those days. For whatever reason the atheistic and the Islamic has come into the ascendancy, with atheism leading the way. And the reason for the rise of the latter in the West is the result of the call for tolerance by the former. Atheists, for some reason, despise Christianity more than they do other religions. The reason maybe simply a matter of contempt for the familiar; one tends to dislike one's shifty cousin more than the one dislikes the unknown man who robbed a bank.
Via college professors who were, and are, always looking for the "different" to make their academic chops the secular became the plus non ultra, The result was that the secular, or more specifically, the humanist secular point of view was taught in colleges and universities. And who comes out of colleges and universities? Journalists and teachers. The very people who pass on information to the youth and the public. Let's face it, most college students are unrooted philosophically and religiously. They've just come out of puberty, and if they haven't had a good grounding, and a very good grounding in either believing Christianity or moral Christianity they'll find themselves at sea and sometimes grab onto a world outlook that is diametrically opposed to with what they were raised.
The whole point of this awfully too long post is that we, in the West, including the U.S., no longer live in a Christian world. Much of the U.S. clings to Christmas as a generic holiday; almost like New Year's Day in Asia. Just a day to get time off work and exchange gifts. It's more Santa Claus than Christ. It's become a secular holiday, and the grumpy atheists really don't mind the secular aspects. They hate the specifically Christian aspects. They don't file lawsuits against a city putting illuminated snowflakes or stars on lamp poles during the Christmas season, But a manger on the grounds of the city hall demands a lawsuit or threatening letter.
But that's the way it is and that is the way it will be unless there is a religious revival. And we should get used to it. And we'll have to get used to it because there is worse to come. Our job as Christians is to believe and live our Faith and express our Faith in public. But we cannot expect the public accept our Faith or respect our Faith. The history of human nature tells us so. We are pariahs of the good and of the Faith, and the sooner we realize it the better for us.
