Christmas’s War on You
If there’s one thing we modern folk do well, it’s war. Some historians argue that humanity as a whole has only been at peace, or without war, for 8% of our waking lives as a species. And our specific brand of humanity, known as the United States, has experienced at most only 17 years of peace. So it surprised no one when we learned that someone was starting a “war” on Christmas a few years back. After all, it’s what we do.
In this war, however, the battle lines were not geographical as much as ideological. In this fight, coffee cups with the phrase “Happy Holidays” were lobbed like rhetorical grenades at unsuspecting Christians just trying to get a low-fat soy latte before the contemporary service at their local congregation. And by lobbed, I mean handed to you nicely by a 20-year-old who took the time to spell your name right, look you in the eye, and smile.
What a strange war indeed.
It should come as no surprise to us then that Christmas is fighting back. Which sounds great at first, but when we peel back the curtain of this conflict, we are exposed to this very hard truth: Christmas is also at war with Christmas. Like an insurgency amid a people we are trying to free, Christmas has decided to go to war with our ideas of Christmas. We are, I’m sad to say, fighting a war on two fronts.
What’s baffling is how we, schooled in war as we are, missed its outrageous attacks.
Perhaps it was their subtlety that caused us to miss them. We do not do that well, I suppose.
But like any good general would remind us, knowing our enemy is a large part of the battle. With that in mind, and with the steely resolve that we can win this fight, I present some of Christmas’s most dangerous ideological attacks.
Christmas is dangerously inclusive. Unfortunately, it seems that Christmas is much more interested in bringing all people together than becoming a niche holiday for only a few. Christmas thus has invited sorcerers and shepherds to play a part in its founding (Matt. 1:1-12; Luke 2:8-20). We know from our intelligence, however, that these sorcerers are certain to have false ideas about who God is, and especially who Jesus is. They certainly should not play any important role in the story. Moreover, we also know that shepherds are not to be trusted. After all, if they aren’t allowed to testify in court, why are they among the first evangelists for our Lord? This is an oversight, if not an outright mistake, that will lead to nothing helpful or good for Christmas. Imagine the type of people this story would attract. To fight this, a much more exclusive tone must be taken, with precise verbiage so none can be mistaken about what this all is about. Perhaps distancing Christmas from its inclusive origins is best.
Christmas has dangerous and inefficient ideas about how to go about conquering the world. Core to this is the idea that God would come as a baby. This is a frustratingly slow and ignorant plan. It requires years of waiting, unnecessary risks at the hands of teenage parents, and little by the way of power and influence. No movement can sustain itself with such strategies. To come as a baby is foolhardy at best and lunacy at worst. If Christmas has its way, people may begin to think that the fast, large, loud, influential, and attractive ways and people we have so much invested in are not actually the way that God does things. This simply cannot be allowed. We have built too much on this foundation. If Christmas cannot be glamourous, bright and shiny, and used to manipulate our emotions at the most superficial level, we will experience a complete collapse of our industry. And the edifice that holds high our lovely consumeristic cathedrals will fall. Thus, we propose a counterattack wherein little is mentioned or thought of about the actual baby Jesus, but rather his presence is used as a bit player in the larger drama of family time and excessive spending.
Christmas is non-violent. This may be the most concerning attack by Christmas on Christmas. The fact that the armies of heaven lay down flaming swords and form a choir in response to the announcement of Jesus’s birth is confusing and ludicrous (Luke 2:13-14). Add to this the strange idea that Christmas places on Jesus himself the title of “Prince of Peace” (Isa. 9:6). This is so incredibly dangerous to Christmas that it’s almost hard to quantify. If this idea grabs hold, the war will end, and we will lose. Because if Christians think that their role is not to fight for Christmas but to live it out in this way, the arguments will cease altogether as they decide for more non-violent and peaceful language. Moreover, if Christians begin to think that this idea extends beyond Christmas, the way we speak to the world about everything will change entirely. We will have to learn to suffer instead of inflicting pain, and then we will have to trust that some higher power will lift us out of the dust into which we will most certainly be pummeled. This cannot come to pass. But Christmas has within it a helpful model. A king who knows how to get things done. King Herod knew that this baby and these ideas were dangerous to Christmas, so he attempted to eliminate the threat by neutralizing all young baby boys in Bethlehem (Matt. 2:16-18). It was a brutal strategy that almost worked. We must follow suit. Not with violent actions, but violent ideology. We must neutralize these ideas in all our people, but especially the young ones. Get them to focus on what they can get, and not what they can give. Use propaganda to distract them from the life of Jesus, starting here at Christmas with his birth, and then focus exclusively on the part of the story where he dies for them so they can live as they want. This dovetails nicely with the overriding self-interest we will plant in them through Christmas once we have conquered it. But we must remain vigilant, keeping them as far as possible from Jesus’s life and teachings. This is crucial and could unravel the entire plan. Luckily, we have many who can help us; they’re called pastors. Though they know the truth of the story, they are easily swayed by public opinion and are scared of what may happen to their 401k if they tell the truth. This is to our advantage. For we have many supporters among their churches. In short, we have found this to be our best tactic against this most dangerous of all the attacks of Christmas on Christmas. For now, it seems to be working well.
There are, of course, many more attacks that Christmas is leveling against our ideas of Christmas. But fear not. We remain vigilant. This is a war we can win. As we said before, this is what we do.
Merry Christmas.
