War On Christmas

The Background on the War on Christmas

Despite History actually showing Christmas hasn’t always been celebrated as we do today as seen in the Puritans banning Christmas, now Christmas and Christians are united and an attack on Merry Christmas is an attack on Christians as well.

The idea of a “War on Christmas” has turned things like holiday greetings and decorations into potentially divisive political statements. People who believe Christmas is under attack point to inclusive phrases like “Happy Holidays” as (liberal) insults to Christianity.

For over a decade, these debates have taken place mainly on conservative talk radio and cable programs. But this year they also burst onto a much grander stage: the presidential election.

At a rally in Wisconsin December 2016, Donald J. Trump stood in front of a line of Christmas trees and repeated a campaign-trail staple.

“When I started 18 months ago, I told my first crowd in Wisconsin that we are going to come back here someday and we are going to say ‘Merry Christmas’ again,” he said. “Merry Christmas. So, Merry Christmas everyone. Happy New Year, but Merry Christmas.”

 Trump’s campaign promise that, if he won, every store would say “Merry Christmas,” and “Happy Holidays” would be out. Trump had previously called out Starbucks holiday cups for being insufficiently Christmas-oriented, a criticism shared by many people on social media for the second year in a row. Gap, Target, The Home Depot, and many other retailers have been criticized in the past. The now-annual controversy over the “war on Christmas” highlights the difficulties now faced by any company that wants to avoid offense in the run-up to the winter holidays.

Christmas is a federal holiday celebrated widely by the country’s Christian majority. So where did the idea that it is threatened come from and is it even real?

A History of Christmas Itself

In Rome, where winters were not as harsh as those in the far north, Saturnalia—a holiday in honor of Saturn, the god of agriculture—was celebrated. Beginning in the week leading up to the winter solstice and continuing for a full month, Saturnalia was a hedonistic time, when food and drink were plentiful and the normal Roman social order was turned upside down. For a month, slaves would become masters. Peasants were in command of the city. Business and schools were closed so that everyone could join in the fun. There was gambling and even cross-dressing. During the celebration, Romans would decorate their homes with holly and place small figurines called sigillaria on the boughs of evergreen trees. Over time, the evergreen leaves and red berries came to symbolize the festive and merry season hence were the orgins of the red and green for Christmas colors might have came from.

In Northern Europe, a drunken festival called Yule celebrated the birth of the sun or the winter solstice, they celebrated around evergreen trees to ward off winter depression. The Yule Log was originally an entire tree, that was carefully chosen and brought into the house with great ceremony. The largest end of the log would be placed into the fire hearth while the rest of the tree stuck out into the room! The log would be lit from the remains of the previous year’s log which had been carefully stored away and slowly fed into the fire through the Twelve Days of Christmas.

Also around the time of the winter solstice, Romans observed Juvenalia, a feast honoring the children of Rome. In addition, members of the upper classes often celebrated the birthday of Mithra, the god of the unconquerable sun, on December 25. It was believed that Mithra, an infant god, was born of a rock. For some Romans, Mithra’s birthday was the most sacred day of the year.

In the early years of Christianity, Easter was the main holiday; the birth of Jesus was not celebrated. In the fourth century, church officials decided to institute the birth of Jesus as a holiday. Unfortunately, the Bible does not mention date for his birth (a fact Puritans later pointed out in order to deny the legitimacy of the celebration). Although some evidence suggests that his birth may have occurred in the spring (why would shepherds be herding in the middle of winter?), Pope Julius I chose December 25. It is commonly believed that the church chose this date in an effort to adopt and absorb the traditions of the pagan Saturnalia festival. First called the Feast of the Nativity, the custom spread to Egypt by 432 and to England by the end of the sixth century. By the end of the eighth century, the celebration of Christmas had spread all the way to Scandinavia. Today, in the Greek and Russian orthodox churches, Christmas is celebrated 13 days after the 25th, which is also referred to as the Epiphany or Three Kings Day. This is the day it is believed that the three wise men finally found Jesus in the manger.

By holding Christmas at the same time as traditional winter solstice festivals, church leaders increased the chances that Christmas would be popularly embraced, but gave up the ability to dictate how it was celebrated. By the Middle Ages, Christianity had, for the most part, replaced pagan religion. On Christmas, believers attended church, then celebrated raucously in a drunken, carnival-like atmosphere similar to today’s Mardi Gras. Each year, a beggar or student would be crowned the “lord of misrule” and eager celebrants played the part of his subjects. The poor would go to the houses of the rich and demand their best food and drink. If owners failed to comply, their visitors would most likely terrorize them with mischief. Christmas became the time of year when the upper classes could repay their real or imagined “debt” to society by entertaining less fortunate citizens.

There is not a War on Christmas (Besides Christmas was brought to America from the Immigrants)

Traditional Christmas foods are banned — no mince pies, and definitely no pudding. Stores are forced to stay open all day on Dec. 25, and children are required to go to school. Any violations of the ban on Christmas are a criminal offense.

No this isn’t a pleasant dream of liberals but the most organized attack on Christmas came from the Puritans, who banned celebrations of the holiday in the 17th century because it did not accord with their interpretation of the Bible.

The entire book of Jeremiah 10 condemns people cutting down trees and decorating them with ornaments. A lot of Christian opponents such as the Puritans tie that book’s condemnation with our modern-day Christmas trees.

The influential Oliver Cromwell preached against “the heathen traditions” of Christmas carols, decorated trees, and any joyful expression that desecrated “that sacred event.”

A short, easily-overlooked paragraph from an early law book of the Massachusetts Bay Colony reads as follows:

“For preventing disorders arising in several places within this jurisdiction, by reason of some still observing such festivals as were superstitiously kept in other countries, to the great dishonor of God and offence of others, it is therefore ordered by this Court and the authority thereof, that whosoever shall be found observing any such day as Christmas or the like, either by forbearing of labor, feasting, or any other way, upon such accountants as aforesaid, every person so offending shall pay of every such offence five shillings, as a fine to the county.”

Yes, you read that right. In 1659 the Puritan government of the Massachusetts Bay Colony actually banned Christmas. So how did one of the largest Christian holidays come to be persecuted in the earliest days of New England? This meant that Christmas wasn’t the only holiday on the chopping block. Easter and Whitsunday, other important historical celebrations, were also forbidden. Bans like these would continue through the 18th and 19th centuries (the US House of Representatives even convened on Christmas in 1802).

Christmas in 17th century England actually wasn’t so different from the holiday we celebrate today. It was one of the largest religious observances, full of traditions, feast days, revelry and cultural significance.

They also felt that due to the holiday’s loose pagan origins, celebrating it would constitute idolatry. A common sentiment among the leaders of the time was that such feast days detracted from their core beliefs: “They for whom all days are holy can have no holiday.”

The pilgrims, English separatists that came to America in 1620, were even more orthodox in their Puritan beliefs. As a result, Christmas was not a holiday in early America. From 1659 to 1681, the celebration of Christmas was actually outlawed in Boston. Anyone exhibiting the Christmas spirit was fined five shillings. By contrast, in the Jamestown settlement, Captain John Smith reported that Christmas was enjoyed by all and passed without incident.

Christmas celebrations, as they were sporadically celebrated in our new nation, got a bad name in the 1826 Eggnog Riot. Yes, you read that right. A bunch of whiskey was smuggled into the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, and at least a third of the cadets — including Jefferson Davis, future president of the Confederacy — got so drunk on their spiked eggnog that they rioted until Christmas morning.

Christmas has been dividing the nation along predictable lines since before the Civil War. Pious Northerners preferred Thanksgiving over Christmas as their big holiday. Southerners, meanwhile, saw Christmas as one of the peak days of the social season, and it was made an official holiday in Alabama in 1836, then in Louisiana and Arkansas in 1838, long before it became a federal holiday.

And Santa was frequently deployed as a prop in both Union and Confederate propaganda during the Civil War. Harper’s Weekly ran a cartoon showing Saint Nick handing a puppet with a rope around its neck to Jefferson Davis. Meanwhile, the Richmond Examiner called Santa a “Dutch toy monger” and New York “scrub” who had nothing to do with a traditional Virginia Christmas.

After the American Revolution, English customs and Puritanism started to fall out of favor, including Christmas. In fact, Christmas wasn’t declared a federal holiday until June 26, 1870 when President Ulysses S. Grant’s made an attempt at unification.

It wasn’t until the 19th century that Americans began to embrace Christmas. Americans re-invented Christmas, and changed it from a raucous carnival holiday into a family-centered day of peace and nostalgia. The early 19th century was a period of class conflict and turmoil. During this time, unemployment was high and gang rioting by the disenchanted classes often occurred during the Christmas season. In 1828, the New York city council instituted the city’s first police force in response to a Christmas riot. This catalyzed certain members of the upper classes to begin to change the way Christmas was celebrated in America.

Also around this time, English author Charles Dickens created the classic holiday tale, A Christmas Carol. The story’s message-the importance of charity and good will towards all humankind-struck a powerful chord in the United States and England and showed members of Victorian society the benefits of celebrating the holiday.

The family was also becoming less disciplined and more sensitive to the emotional needs of children during the early 1800s. Christmas provided families with a day when they could lavish attention-and gifts-on their children without appearing to “spoil” them.

By the 1890s Christmas ornaments were arriving from Germany and Christmas tree popularity was on the rise around the U.S. It was noted that Europeans used small trees about four feet in height, while Americans liked their Christmas trees to reach from floor to ceiling.

German immigrants brought over many Christmas traditions we know today, such as Advent calendars, gingerbread houses, cookies and Christmas trees. When Queen Victoria’s German husband, Prince Albert, put up a Christmas tree at Windsor Castle in 1848, the Christmas tree became a tradition throughout England, the United States, and Canada.

The early 20th century saw Americans decorating their trees mainly with homemade ornaments, while the German-American sect continued to use apples, nuts, and marzipan cookies. Popcorn joined in after being dyed bright colors and interlaced with berries and nuts. Electricity brought about Christmas lights, making it possible for Christmas trees to glow for days on end. With this, Christmas trees began to appear in town squares across the country and having a Christmas tree in the home became an American tradition.

The Rockefeller Center Christmas tree tradition began in 1933. Franklin Pierce, the 14th president, brought the Christmas tree tradition to the White House. In 1923, President Calvin Coolidge started the National Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony now held every year on the White House lawn.

But the obsession with an endangered Christmas came roaring back in the 1950s when the John Birch Society decided that the glamorization and commercialization of Christmas was one big communist plot.

“One of the techniques now being applied by the Reds to weaken the pillar of religion in our country is the drive to take Christ out of Christmas — to denude the event of its religious meaning,” wrote Hubert Kregeloh in a Birch society pamphlet.

Kregeloh warned that holiday and winter decorations in stores that didn’t evoke Christ were “part of a much broader plan, not only to promote the UN, but to destroy all religious beliefs and customs.” And he urged all Americans to boycott department stores without proper, religious décor.

Americans built a Christmas tradition all their own that included pieces of many other customs as well the commercialization of the holiday, including decorating trees, sending holiday cards, Santa and gift-giving.

Although most families quickly bought into the idea that they were celebrating Christmas how it had been done for centuries, Americans had really re-invented a holiday to fill the cultural needs of a growing nation.

Many Christmas Traditions are Recent Creations of Corporate America

Santa Claus that we know today is actually the creation of the Coca-Cola company. Haddon Sundblom’s artistic vision and the true history of the modern day Santa Claus can be seen in this video from Coca-Cola.

Many people are surprised to learn that prior to 1931, Santa was depicted as everything from a tall gaunt man to a spooky-looking elf. He has donned a bishop’s robe and a Norse huntsman’s animal skin. In fact, when Civil War cartoonist Thomas Nast drew Santa Claus for Harper’s Weekly in 1862, Santa was a small elflike figure who supported the Union. Nast continued to draw Santa for 30 years, changing the color of his coat from tan to the red he’s known for today.

For inspiration, Sundblom turned to Clement Clark Moore’s 1822 poem “A Visit From St. Nicholas” (commonly called “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas”). Moore’s description of St. Nick led to an image of a warm, friendly, pleasantly plump and human Santa. (And even though it’s often said that Santa wears a red coat because red is the color of Coca-Cola, Santa appeared in a red coat before Sundblom painted him.)

The legend of Santa Claus can be traced back hundreds of years to a monk named St. Nicholas. It is believed that Nicholas was born sometime around 280 A.D. in Patara, near Myra in modern-day Turkey. Much admired for his piety and kindness, St. Nicholas became the subject of many legends. It is said that he gave away all of his inherited wealth and traveled the countryside helping the poor and sick. One of the best known of the St. Nicholas stories is that he saved three poor sisters from being sold into slavery or prostitution by their father by providing them with a dowry so that they could be married. Over the course of many years, Nicholas’s popularity spread and he became known as the protector of children and sailors. His feast day is celebrated on the anniversary of his death, December 6.

St. Nicholas made his first inroads into American popular culture towards the end of the 18th century. In December 1773, and again in 1774, a New York newspaper reported that groups of Dutch families had gathered to honor the anniversary of his death.

The name Santa Claus evolved from Nick’s Dutch nickname, Sinter Klaas, a shortened form of Sint Nikolaas (Dutch for Saint Nicholas). In 1804, John Pintard, a member of the New York Historical Society, distributed woodcuts of St. Nicholas at the society’s annual meeting. The background of the engraving contains now-familiar Santa images including stockings filled with toys and fruit hung over a fireplace. I

Gift-giving, mainly centered around children, has been an important part of the Christmas celebration since the holiday’s rejuvenation in the early 19th century. Stores began to advertise Christmas shopping in 1820, and by the 1840s, newspapers were creating separate sections for holiday advertisements, which often featured images of the newly-popular Santa Claus. In 1841, thousands of children visited a Philadelphia shop to see a life-size Santa Claus model. It was only a matter of time before stores began to attract children, and their parents, with the lure of a peek at a “live” Santa Claus. In the early 1890s, the Salvation Army needed money to pay for the free Christmas meals they provided to needy families. They began dressing up unemployed men in Santa Claus suits and sending them into the streets of New York to solicit donations. Those familiar Salvation Army Santas have been ringing bells on the street corners of American cities ever since.

Rudolph, “the most famous reindeer of all,” was born over a hundred years after his eight flying counterparts. The red-nosed wonder was the creation of Robert L. May, a copywriter at the Montgomery Ward department store.

In 1939, May wrote a Christmas-themed story-poem to help bring holiday traffic into his store. Using a similar rhyme pattern to Moore’s “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas,” May told the story of Rudolph, a young reindeer who was teased by the other deer because of his large, glowing, red nose. Montgomery Ward sold almost two and a half million copies of the story in 1939. When it was reissued in 1946, the book sold over three and half million copies.

Fast forward to the modern American holiday tradition: over-analyzing seasonally available Starbucks cups for signs of liberal political correctness. This has to be one of the craziest controversies. Here you can see cups from 2017 for the last 20 years when they started making holiday cups. Sound anything like the effort a couple of years ago to boycott Starbucks because it decided on minimalist, all-red cups for the Christmas season? That’s right, the Reds aka Communist are coming back via coffee cups.

Starbucks 2017 holiday cups are drawing a lot of attention after a BuzzFeed News reporter suggested the design has a “gay agenda.” In addition to featuring hearts, presents, and a Christmas tree, the design showcases two people holding hands with many saying they are genderless or women hands and therefore promoting the LGBT lifestyle.

In an irony, who remembers the original anti-consumption, anti-Santa meaning of the “Jesus is the Reason for the Season” slogan, Fox and allies like the American Family Association focused on getting more Christmas into stores and shopping malls. For more than a decade, Fox News hosts have kept viewers updated on which stores were “in the Christmas spirit,” and the American Family Association, which operates nearly 200 radio stations in the United States, maintains its very own “naughty and nice” list for retailers. It has nothing to do with religion anymore, little to nothing is mentioned about Jesus, it is all about the commercialization of Christmas and keeping it that way.

There are many holidays celebrated on December, 14 total including the following:

• Saint Nicholas Day (Christian)
• Fiesta of Our Lady of Guadalupe (Mexican)
• St. Lucia Day (Swedish)
• Hanukkah (Jewish)
• Christmas Day (Christian)
• Three Kings Day/Epiphany (Christian)
• Boxing Day (Australian, Canadian, English, Irish)
• Kwanzaa (African American)
• Omisoka (Japanese)
• Yule (Pagan)
• Saturnalia (Pagan)

Why isn’t Christmas considered a “War on Hanukkah” or another holiday? American Christians have a close relationship with Israel but still, they want even the Jews to be forced to say “Merry Christmas”.

The term “War on Christmas” arose in the writings of anti-immigration activist Peter Brimelow in 1999 but languished until October 2005, when John Gibson appeared on The O’Reilly Factor to discuss his new book, The War on Christmas: How the Liberal Plot to Ban the Sacred Christian Holiday Is Worse Than You Thought.

Mr. Gibson said in an interview that he was “amazed” by the uproar his book caused.

He said it primarily focused on an issue that rarely happens anymore: educators and local officials banning nonreligious symbols like Santa Claus or Christmas trees out of a mistaken belief that displaying them violated the Constitution.

Mr. Gibson said the book had taken on a life of its own over the years — and that it had never dwelled on the political implications of “Happy Holidays.”

He attributed the firestorm to two things: The book’s take-no-prisoner’s title (“The War on Christmas: How the Liberal Plot to Ban the Sacred Christian Holiday Is Worse Than You Thought”) and the Fox News host Bill O’Reilly.

“It wasn’t really me. I think it was more Bill, to tell you the truth,” he said. “When Bill made it an issue, it went mega.”

Indeed, Mr. O’Reilly has returned to the theme of a war on Christmas again and again over the years. In 2012 he told viewers that liberals were “tying the Christmas situation into secular progressive politics” because they wanted “a new America, and traditional Christmas isn’t a part of it.”

That argument became a sweeping shorthand for conservative anxieties, Mr. Cassino said.

“They say the next step after saying ‘Happy Holidays’ is abortion on demand and euthanasia,” he said. “That’s a hell of a slippery slope, but that’s the argument being made.”

A study by Fairleigh Dickinson University found that watching Fox News increased the likelihood that someone would believe in the War on Christmas by 5 to 10 percent.

In a December 2005 Gallup poll, 41% of respondents said they preferred to be greeted with “Happy Holidays” during the holiday season, and 56% said they’d rather hear “Merry Christmas.” Ten years later, a survey we conducted at Fairleigh Dickinson University’s PublicMind research center found that only 25% wanted to hear “Happy Holidays,” while 65% of Americans said they preferred “Merry Christmas.” Despite variance between pollsters and different ways of wording the question, the trend is clear: Over the last decade, many Americans changed their minds about the greeting they want to hear, and the question of what to say to customers and neighbors became fraught with social meaning. This change — and the very idea of a war on Christmas — seems to be the result of coverage on one channel: Fox News.

From 2005 on, Fox News has returned to the topic every year, while noncable television networks and major newspapers have given it little to no coverage, mentioning it only a handful of times, and never seriously. Most of the discussion about it outside of Fox has been on MSNBC and The Daily Show, both of which have used it to mock Fox’s coverage.

The argument that saying “Happy Holidays” is the spear tip of a concerted secularization plot may seem like a stretch, but it seems to have been accepted by many Americans. In a December 2013 national PublicMind poll, 28% of Americans agreed or strongly agreed with the statement, “There has been a concerted effort by politicians to take ‘Christ’ out of Christmas.” Forty percent of Republicans agreed (33% strongly), compared to only 16% of Democrats. As might be expected, frequent churchgoers (those who attend once a week or more) are more likely to think there’s a war on Christmas (in the survey, we avoided using that exact term so that respondents wouldn’t be tipped off to the research question we were exploring), with 35% agreeing.

What’s amazing about this is that coverage on one cable channel has led to a large section of the American public changing their everyday behavior and the way they view the behavior of others. It means that business owners’ decisions about something as innocuous as a holiday greeting has become viewed through a political lens that owners and managers wouldn’t have considered before. It’s easy to imagine that we live in a post–mass media world, one in which no single news source can have a real impact on our society. In this case, one news outlet still retains the ability to move the opinions and behaviors of the American public.

Donald Trump claims he brought “Merry Christmas” back to the White House. We found plenty of evidence proving him wrong. Here is a video of Obama saying “Merry Christmas” many times throughout the years. 

Many often point the finger at Muslims, Jews, Atheists and non-Christians when confronted with the idea of people who don’t celebrate Christmas. Truth to be told, MANY Atheists and non-Christians celebrate Christmas, they take part in all the holiday fun without buying into the religious aspect of it. Hence, why Santa is often taught around the world and even those in non-religious families still celebrate the day of Christmas.

Millions of Christians do not observe Christmas. Among them are Quakers, Jehovah’s Witnesses,  and members of the Churches of Christ. Some of the half-dozen Christian faiths that do no celebrate Dec. 25 contend there is nothing in the Bible that says Christ was born on that day.

“Reasons range from the belief that ‘every day is a holy day,’ as promoted by some Quakers, to a desire to observe those days the Bible emphasizes, such as the Old Testament holy days, while others, such as Jehovah’s Witnesses, suggest any birthday, even that of Jesus, shouldn’t be celebrated,” writes Mark A Kellner for the Desert News.

Among the largest group of Christmas-shunners are the Jehovah’s Witnesses, which number close to 2 million in the United States, Kellner writes. Also Seventh-day Adventists, United Church of God, everyone’s favorite church, Westboro Baptist Church.

Conservative Christians that watch Fox News at least have this fake concept that the “War on Christmas” is just from soul-less, God-hating liberals and Muslims but there are actually many Conservatives Christians themselves who don’t celebrate Christmas.

For example, there’s a Facebook page named “Christians Who Don’t Celebrate Christmas“. They’re all socially conservative Christians who don’t adhere to any organizations or faiths. In fact, from all the comments and postings I’ve read, they’re actually against all the aforementioned groups that you’ve seen.

I’ve had very conservative friends in the past who preach about the pagan origins of Christmas and are adamantly against Christmas trees and all that. Yet, they still see family while not agreeing with their relatives’ decisions to erect Christmas trees and all that.

Becky Fischer, a conservative Pentecostal who became prominent for the 2006 film “Jesus Camp”, celebrates Christmas, and even and encourages Christians to celebrate Hanukkah.

It should be noted that Jews, Muslims and others who do not celebrate Christmas often say they are not offended by a hearty “Merry Christmas.” So perhaps there is hope for peace on earth, or at least cable television.

Instead of forcing everyone to celebrate Christmas like we have in the past few generations. Maybe we should see the long history of the Christmas and the many holidays that were celebrated before that, maybe we can let people celebrate the holidays how they want. We are after all in a country with a freedom of religion.

Simply put, the war on Christmas is not real and there is just as much opposition from Conservative Christians as some of these liberals Fox News will promote to stir up more division. If you are a real Christian, then remember you are a witness of Christ, wherein the Red letters would Jesus support your attitude of self-righteousness and forcing of beliefs on others. It is a very un-Christlike and dear I say goes against the theme of Christmas altogether.

There Is A War On Christmas

If Jesus was back among us, he’d be a law-abiding gun owner.

He’d support the Police.

And he’d say “Merry Christmas” not “Happy Holidays.”

— Joe Walsh (@WalshFreedom) November 27, 2016

There is a lot of articles and news that the liberal mainstream media is hiding and only Fox News and Breitbart are talking about the War on Christmas. You can view a list of articles on Fox News website. 

There is a long history of Merry Christmas, The term ‘Merry Christmas’ might well have been made very popular in 1843 from two different sources.

The first Christmas Card, sent in 1843 by Sir Henry Cole, had this wording on it: “A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to You”.

“Firstchristmascard“. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens was also published in 1843 and the phrase ‘Merry Christmas’ appears 21 times in the book! Charles Dickens also quoted “God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen” in A Christmas Carol, but changed it to: “God bless you, merry gentleman! May nothing you dismay!” moving the comma to before the merry!

The Carol “We Wish You a Merry Christmas [and a Happy New Year]” is another old carol from the ‘West Country’ (South West England) but was only first published in 1935 and this probably confirmed the use of ‘Merry Christmas’ over ‘Happy Christmas’.

Former Arizona pastor Joshua Feuerstein said “Starbucks REMOVED CHRISTMAS from their cups because they hate Jesus,” in a Facebook video post that’s been watched over 12 million times and shared by more than 400,000 people.

Feuerstein is urging Christians to tell baristas their name is “Merry Christmas” so that they’ll be “pranked” into writing the message on the cup.

Tory MP David Burrowes has criticised the move. He told Breitbart London: “The Starbucks coffee cup change smells more of political correctness than a consumer-led change.

“The public has a common sense grasp on the reality that at Christmas time, whether you have a Christian faith or not, Britain celebrates Christmas.”

His concerns were echoed by Christian groups who branded them “scrooges” and accused them of trying to hide the religious message behind Christmas.

Simon Calvert of the Christian Institute told Breitbart London: “What is it about Christmas that Starbucks are afraid of celebrating? Haven’t they heard it’s the most wonderful time of the year, and the season of good will to ALL men? They should get involved and stop being scrooges.”

And more have piled in, with Andrea Williams of Christian Concern saying: “This is a denial of historical reality and the great Christian heritage behind the American Dream that has so benefitted Starbucks.

“This also denies the hope of Jesus Christ and His story told so powerfully at this time of year.”

Universities across the country are encouraging – or requiring – students to make any holiday celebrations secular and “inclusive.”

On “Fox & Friends,” Campus Reform correspondent and UC-Irvine student Ariana Rowlands said the politically correct left preaches tolerance, but not for Christianity.

“These college campuses across the country are so focused on not offending people and protecting people’s feelings that they’ll pander to the minority to the detriment of the majority, and remove and go over a big holiday in the process,” Rowlands said.

She said this phasing out of Christmas is an example of how students are being coddled by colleges, and they’re going to take that mentality with them when they graduate and enter the real world.

“It seems that college administrators and college campuses don’t really have respect for freedom of religion, just like they don’t have respect for freedom of speech,” Rowlands said.

After having Obama who hated Christmas and Christians in general we finally have Trump who said

“We are stopping cold the attacks on Judeo-Christian values,” the president declared to the Values Voter Summit last September. “You know, we’re getting near that beautiful Christmas season that people don’t talk about anymore. They don’t use the word ‘Christmas’ because it’s not politically correct. You go to department stores, and they’ll say, ‘Happy New Year’ and they’ll say other things. And it will be red, they’ll have it painted, but they don’t say it. Well, guess what? We’re saying ‘Merry Christmas’ again.”

My View

We would do well this time of year to remember the words of the Apostle Paul from Philippians 2:

Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others. In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:

Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
rather, he made himself nothing
by taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
by becoming obedient to death—
even death on a cross!  

In many ways fighting to keep things Merry Christmas borderlines on fighting for idols, an idol of keeping things as we want them, not as they actually were. Forgetting the whole Christmas story is about God coming to us…as a Jew and nowhere is it about spending all our money on gifts. If the checkout clerk says Happy Holidays then we claim persecution and deserve to boycott stores until they do it like Jesus never did it.

Ignoring the fact that Jesus would have celebrated Hanukkah, the only people I see talk about the War on Christmas is my Fox News only Conservative friends. Every single year they get worked up about how we should be saying Merry Christmas. One thing that stands out to me is how un-Merry and borderline rude it is to want to force everyone to say Merry Christmas and do things as you want. That doesn’t seem to go with the theme of Christmas at all . “Glory to God on high, and on earth peace, goodwill towards men”.

I don’t like pop as it was called growing up, I now live in an area where it called soda or Coke. If I get 40 people who don’t like carbonated beverages together does that make it a war on Pop? We have 323.1 million in America, you are going to find a few Ebenezer Scrooge types that don’t like Christmas.  You are more bound to find people who are more open to respecting other people’s holidays and simply want to show decency, respect and actual goodwill towards fellow humans. Does that really qualify as a War on Christmas?

This War on Christmas comes across more as a bully to others rather than an actual war on Christmas or Christians. If you want to keep Christ in Christmas, get out there and love people radically. The church is declining and being angry about Merry Christmas does more damage to Christians then what any “Godless liberal” thinks.

There is no real “War on Christmas”, I know Jews and even atheist who will tell me Merry Christmas this time of the year. I personally say Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to include the New Year holiday. None like 0% of my liberal friends have an issue with Merry Christmas, they all say it online. It is the one day on Facebook where everyone despite what political side they are on are posting “Merry Christmas”.

If there was a social war on Christmas there would be organizations like the NRA, KKK, or something like that having rallies demanding Happy Holidays. Most evidence is secular colleges trying to not promote one specific view for this time of the year. As a Christian, I would prefer to Christmas story we all know but as a secular college and how the Constitution basically has a separation of Church and State, the colleges are doing the right thing.

Hence we get to the base of the problem. when you’re accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression. White Christians and especially white males have been the people in charge, they make the decisions, they have always gotten it their way.

By 2050, minorities would make up more than 50 percent of the population and become the majority. A survey released in 2017 by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) found that just 43% of Americans now identify as white and Christian. By comparison, 81% of Americans identified as white Christians in 1976. The report reinforces the findings of a 2015 survey by the Pew Research Center, which found that the number of white Christians in the U.S. had fallen to 46%.

In this changing world, both in demographics but also in religion the ruling class has never even thought about ceding to another race or religion before until recently. So now the White Christians feel oppressed, the gays fought a war against traditional marriage, two dads or two moms is a war against the traditional family. Transgender people are waging a war on gender norms. Taking down Confederate monuments is a war on white southern heritage. Trump is in a culture war with his white base against the politically correct elites aka the P.C. police. Knelling football players is a war on the flag and military. The list goes on.

The White majority now feel they are losing power and not having their voices heard when they have been used to having the only voice that mattered. The War on Christmas to me is more symbolic of the greater picture of we don’t want to lose our traditions, our way of life to people who don’t think like us. So if you are not for Merry Christmas it is almost implied that you hate Christmas which isn’t true for the majority of Happy Holiday folks.

The War On Christmas has nothing to do with Jesus is the Reason for The Season, it seems everything must be called Christmas with little talk about why it is called Christmas to begin with,

Think about this, I hire someone and every person that walks in the door they say “Hi Phil!”, that is great if your name is Phil but say you as the store owner tell the person to just say hi instead of Hi Phil. Does that mean you just declared war on people named Phil? No, you are including everyone in Hi. Same thing with Happy Holidays! As stated before there are many Christians who don’t even celebrate it.

Happy Holidays is a sign of respect to those everyone despite their personal religious beliefs. It is in no way said to demean the meaning of Christmas. The following holidays are all celebrated in December.

• Saint Nicholas Day (Christian)
• Fiesta of Our Lady of Guadalupe (Mexican)
• St. Lucia Day (Swedish)
• Hanukkah (Jewish)
• Christmas Day (Christian)
• Three Kings Day/Epiphany (Christian)
• Boxing Day (Australian, Canadian, English, Irish)
• Kwanzaa (African American)
• Omisoka (Japanese)
• Yule (Pagan)
• Saturnalia (Pagan)

Christmas is not in danger. In fact, 92 percent of Americans asked by the Pew Research Center in a 2013 study said they celebrate Christmas. Even 87 percent of non-Christians said they celebrate the holiday. The Puritans would be appalled.

If you say “Merry Christmas” I’ll say it back. If you say “Happy Hanukkah” I’ll say it back. If you’re non-religious or just prefer “Happy Holidays” or “Seasons Greetings” I’ll say it back. If you say “Happy Kwanzaa” once again, I will smile and say it back. I’m just happy that someone took the time and said Happy/Merry___ to me.

Forcing people to say “Merry Christmas” just to be condescending or vindictive is pretty much the antithesis of the word “Merry” in Merry Christmas. Least not look at the damage it does to Christianity, not really being a good witness or a light in a dark world.

I’ll mean it when I say any of those options, I truly mean whatever holiday you celebrate might be a good one for you.

Sources:

http://hbr.org/2016/12/how-fox-news-created-the-war-on-christmas

http://www.theodysseyonline.com/christians-groups-that-dont-celebrate-christmas?altdesign=socialux

http://www.whychristmas.com/

http://insider.foxnews.com/tag/war-christmas

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2017/12/01/the-war-on-christmas-predates-trump-and-fox-news-by-almost-400-years/?utm_term=.d89e4b2b3691

http://newengland.com/today/living/new-england-history/how-the-puritans-banned-christmas/

http://www.breitbart.com/london/2015/11/05/mps-christian-groups-slam-starbucks-scrooges-over-red-cups/

http://insider.foxnews.com/2015/11/09/christians-attack-starbucks-removing-christmas-images-red-holiday-cups

http://www.coca-colacompany.com/stories/coke-lore-santa-claus

http://insider.foxnews.com/2015/11/09/christians-attack-starbucks-removing-christmas-images-red-holiday-cups

http://www.history.com/topics/christmas/santa-claus

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/09/27/trump-culture-war-215653

http://adaringadventureornothingatall.wordpress.com/2015/11/07/are-you-being-persecuted/

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2017/12/01/the-war-on-christmas-predates-trump-and-fox-news-by-almost-400-years/?utm_term=.d89e4b2b3691

http://www.history.com/topics/christmas/history-of-christmas-trees