Let's Take Christ Out of Christmas!

            Let’s take Christ out of Christmas. It would solve a problem for us religious types.

            I’m speaking, of course, of the commercialization of Christmas. Sometime between Canadian Thanksgiving and American Thanksgiving, say in mid-November, Christmas as we know it now begins in earnest. North Americans make pilgrimage to their malls to shop or to visit Santa and his elves in their pretty crimson miniskirts. We fire up Amazon and exercise our credit cards. We scan the papers for this year’s version of Starbuck’s coffee cup, and wonder what President Trump is going to say about the War on Christmas. None of us is very surprised when the little kids ask if the shepherds took a sleigh pulled by Rudolph to Bethlehem.

            The bottom line is that Jesus comes in a poor second to our office parties, presents, and partridges in pear trees. And, frankly, I like all that stuff enough so that I don’t want to spoil it by feeling like I’m shorting Jesus when I’m having fun.

            So, I say, instead of fighting the war on Christmas, let’s turn the other cheek and take Christ out of Christmas.

            People who still want angels and shepherds can pick some other date to celebrate Christmas. December 25 was always sort of suspect anyway. The Roman Emperor Constantine picked that date for Christmas because he wanted to replace the traditional pagan solstice celebration with something from that new-fangled Christian religion he picked up to boost his dictatorship. Constantine guessed that Romans would be okay with giving up paganism, but he knew they wouldn’t want to give up partying. Ergo, Christmas!

            It has been a nice experiment, but one that has run its course. It’s finally time to take Christ out of Christmas and give it back to the solstice or the North Pole or Father Time or something like that. That way we can party in December without guilt. We can give and receive gifts without having to drag the wise men into our justifications.

            I think we Christians might do quite well without a faux birthday for Jesus. However, if not, if we really missed singing the Messiah and our favorite carols, we could celebrate Christmas on June 25, instead.

            Christmas in the summer would be less hyped. We would probably pay a bit more attention to the real heart of the religious calendar, Easter—assuming we can hold the line against Easter bunnies and chocolate egg hunts, of course.

            But it would be worth the effort! Let’s take Christ out of Christmas!