In its essence, Christmas
celebrates a very particular event, situated strictly in time and place. The
Christmas baby was born in an identifiable year to flesh-and-blood parents in
an actual village ruled by a named official of the Roman empire. It was the
particularities that frightened the Jacobins, the most radical and
ruthless of the political groups formed in the wake of the French Revolution,
and in association with Robespierre they instituted the Terror of 1793-1794. The Jacobians much
preferred in their austerity to celebrate abstractions when they chose to
celebrate at all. To replace Christmas, the Jacobins instituted holidays in
honor of Virtue, Talent, Labor, and so on. A lotta fun, those French
revolutionaries.
The enemies of Christmas, historically,
have always been utterly humorless in this way; completely lacking in levity,
mistrustful of human spontaneity and vivacity. They are therefore antithetical
to the spirit of true religion, which is to see beyond the occasional gloom of
the world to the luminous truth shining beneath. Angels can fly, goes the old
saying, because they take themselves so lightly. What the Grinches of history
have most hated about Christmas is that it was meant to give pleasure, in food
and drink, in family and friendship, in faith and song.
And if one of those songs is
"I Want a Boob Job for Christmas"? As G.K. Chesterton, a Christian
apologist, pointed out, “wherever there is joy, there is apt to be vulgarity,
as we tend to run away with ourselves when we are most celebratory. The
Christmas of Christians survives all the vulgarity of secular excess. Or so
Chesterton believed, and I'm not going to disagree. In our supposedly
post-Christian age, Chesterton wrote that even secular people "will go on
observing forms that cannot be explained; they will keep Christmas with
Christmas gifts and Christmas benedictions; they will continue to do it; and
suddenly one day they will wake up and discover why."
The joke is that Christmas, even in
this attenuated form, remains the greatest evangelical tool Christians have at
their disposal. One thing that is unquestionably theirs to which everyone else
pays tribute, sometimes grudgingly but much more often with great, exhilarating
abandon. There are some bells that can't be un-rung, some declarations, once
made, that can't be unsaid. There is one star in the heavens that can never go
dark.
We have a rich heritage in
God, and now is not the time to forget it. Now is not the time to do the
bidding of the enemy and follow Satan and his fallen angels, demons, succubus’s, rakshasas
as personified by past and present secular left leaning politicos who are
anti-American, are against the ideals that America promotes and for many people
that can mean different things.
Some people might see the political climate, and some might see a Nike or wine commercial
and take a negative stance on the matter. Similarly, with the concept of
pro-Americanism, people can see these different parts of America and be proud
and feel inspired by what we promote.
Now, are recent and current anti-America
and anti-theists U.S. Presidents, coconspirators of a great coup? Not enough evidence
yet. One thing for certain we are to place our trust in the Lord Jesus Christ,
in Him there is our hope. The
hinge of history is not on the door of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave, Washington, DC, but on the door of a Bethlehem stable.
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