Monday, December 19, 2005
THE SUBJECT OF CHRISTMAS
My Red Hat Society group got together for their Christmas luncheon last Saturday. We are a diverse bunch of ladies, some of whom know each other well since the chapter was started at one company and contains several members who still work there. Others of us are just getting to know each other. Two of my neighbors belong, and it is really through the group luncheons that I have gotten to know them.
Conversation varies widely when 19 or 20 women gather around a big table. We discuss what we have done since last meeting, what's going on at the company where a buyout has made life unpleasant for those who still work there, what our husbands are doing, which new part-time job our Queen Mum has quit now that she is "retired" and only interested in working to get out of the house and earn some fun money. What we don't usually discuss is stories in the news.
Last Saturday was our Christmas luncheon, and last Saturday was an exception.
"Merry Christmas!" one of our members shouted out. "People are telling us we can't say it, so I'm saying it." The rest chimed in, and for a few minutes that was the hot topic that the entire table took up. Whose idea is it that we should stop saying Merry Christmas?
The Christmas fundraiser letters have been arriving in the mail here. Today one arrived from Tal Brooke, President and Chairman of the Spiritual Counterfeits Project. "When I was a boy," he wrote, "and before my family moved overseas, I recall singing Christmas carols in the local public elementary school. Though I came from a self-consciously agnostic family that never went to church, I will never forget feeling a tangible presence of good during those moments of Christian celebration in school."
Today he is a Christian apologist working to expose new religious movements and cultural trends that oppose Christianity. He writes:
"Recently, however, the very freedom of Christians to celebrate Christmas has been under attack. We never asked for this conflict, but as our backs are pinned against the wall we will have no other recourse than to stand and fight. Yet this will require us to look beyond the smoke and mirrors at who is attacking us to identify the source of this growing hostility. So far, many of us have been politely averting our eyes rather than name the source, a highly favored and protected minority that is disproportionately influential. It is like the elephant in the living room that everyone pretends is not there. It is pushing to be seen, pressing us to the wall.
Now the nation's courts are being used against the very America and its majority that embraced these once needy immigrants seeking protection in our Christian land, indeed who now oppose America's Christian heritage."
Instead of naming the source that he believes is attacking Christianity, he quotes Burt Prelutsky's column in Townhall.com titled "The Jewish Grinch who stole Christmas." Instead of quoting it, I'll let you go read it yourself. When you read it, take note of the fact that Prelutsky is Jewish, and yet that doesn't stop him from saying "When it comes to pushing the multicultural, anti-Christian, agenda, you find Jewish judges, Jewish journalists, and the ACLU, at the forefront."
Brooke closes his Christmas letter with this:
"If the present war on Christmas isn't faced with courage, we may lose every freedom for public Christian expression that is left. It's only a matter of time. Yet I fear that the majority of present day Christians are so cowed by being accused of intolerance or hate, and so devoid of any real backbone, that they might simply wilt at the challenge of standing up for something so pivotal as Christmas. Otherwise Christmas will become a distant memory and America will enter a perpetual Christless winter like Narnia under the curse. How sad for America to die not with a bang but a whimper."
