It’s a common phrase, but one I think we ought to revive: Keep Christ in Christmas. Our current society is bent on the destruction of the Christian foundation of our nation, but I also believe that there is a more insidious movement designing and ardently seeking to destroy the Christian concept as one of a sub-intellectual, scientifically unfounded, and whacko mentality cult. Does this sound familiar to some of you? Karl Marx, the founder of Communism, wrote in his Critique of the Hegelian Philosophy of Right, “Religion is the opium of the people.” In his Communist Manifesto, Marx argued that religion is the tool of government to lead the weak. Sigmund Freud added his hatred of religion by dismissing it this way in his Lectures on Psycho-analysis of 1933: “Religion is an illusion and it derives its strength from its readiness to fit in with our instinctual wishful impulses.” This is exactly the philosophy of those who challenge us today.
At the same time, to label the radical Islamists or really, any other non-Christian religion, with those terms will be considered inflammatory, insensitive, and even racist. How did it get this far out of our control? We let it. Even during this year, and we will see it again this Christmas, the ACLU will fight and win to remove the Ten Commandments from public places and not to allow Christian displays on public areas while non-Christian displays have free reign. They will use the same skewed argument they used in the forties (Everson v. Board of Education) when they first distorted the Constitution, intimating that the metaphor Jefferson used in a letter referring to separation of church and state as a first amendment inclusion is “law” when it is not in the Constitution nor can it be cemented as an item of original intent in the language the ACLU intends. Indeed, the intent by Jefferson is to keep the Constitution intact, not allowing government to make any law regarding religion, whether pro or con.1
So what should we do? Keep putting Christ, Christmas, and our religious heritage in front of the public as often and as much as we are able. Display religious items and manger scenes at Christmas. Buy cards that say Merry Christmas, not Happy Holidays. If you are willing to be a testimony, then Christmas is the perfect time to show Jesus coming into the world and to take the opportunity to explain why He came.
1. See Daniel Dreisbach, Thomas Jefferson and the Wall of Separation Between Church and State (New York: New York University Press, 2002), p. 101.