Tis the Season for 'The War on Christmas'

Every year Christians get more and more defensive during the holiday season. The 'War on Christmas' is pretty much all in their own minds. Their definition of war is that if you don't totally believe and do as they say, then you're at war with them. Organizations such as the Liberty Counsel actively look for advertising that doesn't use the word 'Christmas' and decides that is declaration of war.

I don't really care what holidays people want to celebrate personally. I generally enjoy many Christmas traditions and Christ doesn't have much of a place in Christmas for most people anyway. My daughter has begun calling it 'Mas' leaving Christ out altogether. That seems a little silly but I see her point. I have no problem when people tell me 'Merry Christmas' but it seems to be a real sticking point for the evangelicals.

The Liberty Counsel has published their ' Naughty & Nice' list to point out which retailers aren't using the word Christmas. Most retailers are only using the word Christmas because they are targeting their largest group of potential consumers. The Liberty Counsel however feels that using the word 'Holiday' is wrong.

There's an article in my favorite Christian newspaper regarding another front of the 'war' titled 'Christmas: Fact, not fable'. The article then hits several points about how Christianity is true and is nothing like earlier 'pagan' religions. Defensive much? Their points are nothing new and full of holes but most Christians reading the article will just nod and yell out 'Amen'. Apparently if you write a book that includes real people, real places and real events then everything in the book is fact rather than fiction regardless of any evidence (or common sense) to the contrary.

I suppose this means that the comics that were written during World War II were all factual. Rather than being metaphorical, many of them involved Hitler, the Nazis, Churchill, real locations and battles but then would have Captain America or some other super hero help fight to defend our freedoms. Thinking earlier comics were real is preposterous because everyone knows that Smallville isn't real.

According to the article 'The Wise Men of the East' are some of the 'real' people in the bible. I'm not a biblical scholar but I'm pretty sure they aren't mentioned by name and the different gospels don't quite match in regards to the wise men. Oh well, I'm not the target audience of the article.

Christians just can't let go of the magic. It will be refreshing when they can look at the bible as a book of fables and still cherry pick their moral teachings from it without insisting that all the events are fact.