The good news about the war on Christmas is that it’s existed for centuries.  There have always been paranoid Christians who were mad about somebody else trying to destroy their precious holiday.  In 1647 the Puritan parliament of England banned Christmas as a pagan holiday with no biblical basis.  And now, equally vehement Christians get mad because retailers remove pagan elements (such as snowflakes and snowmen) from their coffee mugs.

George Whitefield preached a fantastic sermon in the 1700’s called “The True Way of Keeping Christmas,” (read it here), challenging some of our basic holiday practices as not only un-Christian, but sending us straight to hell.  Do you enjoy playing games with family and friends?  Such time-wasting diversions cause you to eat the Lord’s body to your own damnation.  Do you eat and drink in excess during a season of fasting?  How can you pray “Lead us not into temptation” when you run to temptations arms?  Do you spend money on friends and families and go to Christmas plays?  You have forsaken God for Mammon, and instigated a war on Christmas.

I don’t hate Christmas, I hate all the ways ALL of the ways we as a people make it so difficult to truly be still and truly worship the refugee child-Savior.