An Open Letter: Keeping The Christ In Christmas

Dear Readers,

It’s that time of year again: time for Christmas trees and presents and families gathering around the dinner table. It’s also time for the onslaught of Christmas sales commercials, news stories covering fights between customers on Black Friday, and of course, it’s time for the Fox News panic over the War on Christmas.

Keep-Christ-in-Christmas_--_Dec-2013-Toronto
Image via Wikipedia Commons

Every year, Fox News continues what has become a holiday tradition of annual outrage, manufacturing a war waged by liberals and atheists who want to take Christ out of Christmas. They rant and rail when nativity scenes are removed from courthouses and public schools, when people say “Happy Holidays!” to honor the 13 religious holidays in December that are not Christmas (as well as holidays like Kwanzaa and New Year’s Eve, which have no roots in one particular religious belief) and when Starbucks uses a red holiday cup instead of a cup emblazoned with the words “Merry Christmas.” Their favorite slogan this time of year is “Keep the Christ in Christmas!”

Let’s face it, Americans took Christ out of Christmas years ago.


Try as I might, I can’t find any passages in the Bible about Christ fighting kids and other shoppers to get the hot product with the best sale price.  I must have missed the Biblical commandment that says “The one who spends the most on their kids at Christmas is guaranteed a spot in Heaven this year.” Jesus must have somehow forgotten to insist to his followers that they must have a scene of his birth at their local courthouse in order to properly honor him.

Here’s the thing about keeping Christ in Christmas: that’s on YOU. Your private celebration of Christmas has nothing to do with me, or the government, or Starbucks. I can’t make Christmas mean or not mean anything to you.

Instead of ranting when someone else doesn’t celebrate Christmas, or when our government adheres to the constitutional amendment that insists they not establish any one religion in order to represent all people in this country, why don’t Christians insist on keeping Christ in EVERY day?

I love that some families have a Christmas tradition of pitching in at a homeless shelter or a soup kitchen. Why do you wait for Christmas to do that? I see people outside my local grocery store putting their change in the red Salvation Army bucket. Why do you feel that poor people only deserve your sympathy one day a year?

As for Fox News hosts, guests, contributors, and the avid viewers who insist that the rest of us are ruining Christmas for you: give me a break. You don’t get to trash people in poverty 365 days a year and then tell us what good, pious Christians you are. You don’t get to insist on closing our borders to people in war-torn Syria and then tell us you’re Christ-like. You don’t get to tell us how the amount of your tax dollars spent to feed or care for hungry families, which wouldn’t even cover the upgrade on your next iPhone, is more important than a child’s hungry belly and then expect us to acknowledge your superior example of Christianity.

If you want to follow Jesus’s example throughout the year, feed the hungry. Donate to charities or to a local family you know needs help. Call your local homeless shelter and see what they’re most in need of and then donate those items. Teach your children that people with brown skin who live in this and other countries are not to be hated or feared and deserve our help as much as anyone else does.

Fix your own representation of Christ on a daily basis. The War on Christmas isn’t being waged by liberals, but there’s a war on Christianity being waged by Christians who do not attempt to follow the message of Jesus Christ.

Make sure that isn’t you.

Happy Holidays,

Carissa