Taking The Christmas Out Of Christmas
By Tom Barrett (12/21/04)
I remember as a young man hearing people voice their concerns about “taking Christ out of Christmas.” One often saw signs in stores offering “Merry Xmas” greetings. Today anti-Christ organizations such as the ACLU and the NEA have furthered their master plan by attempting to eliminate all references to Christmas from public discourse. They will not be satisfied to eliminate the religious aspects of Christmas. Now they are attacking the secular aspects as well. Why?
I do not believe it is too strong a statement to say that there is an active conspiracy to attack Christianity and remove all references to God and Jesus from public life. The ACLU (the Anti-Christian Litigation Unit), the NEA (a teacher’s union that has been taken over by atheists and socialists), NOW (a so-called “Women’s Organization” whose actual goals are the promotion of lesbianism and abortion) and a host of atheist, socialist, communist and other liberal organizations are all part of the conspiracy. Yes, Virginia, there is a vast left-wing conspiracy.
The ACLU has frightened teachers and principals by threatening personal lawsuits if they violate the ACLU’s edicts, even though the actions the ACLU prohibits are constitutionally protected. Teachers make little enough as it is. A personal lawsuit by an organization of lawyers with unlimited resources would bankrupt them. So they give in to the ACLU Gestapo tactics.
A recent event at the Lakehoma Elementary School in Mustang, Oklahoma, which made national headlines, illustrates the problem. The School Superintendent censored the children’s play by removing all references, including secular ones. The children were not even allowed to say “Merry Christmas.” However, references to Hanukah and Kwanzaa were left in the play.
Remember, this was a Christmas play. Hanukah was already over, and Kwanzaa is not even a real holiday. (It was made up in December, 1994 by Maulana Karenga as a marketing ploy.) Why this hostility toward Christians? Christians founded this nation as a Christian nation. The vast majority of Americans consider themselves Christians, and they celebrate Christmas.
The liberal conspiracy to crush Christianity is reminiscent of Hitler’s “solution” to the world’s problems. His “master plan” was to eradicate anyone he considered to be genetically inferior. Those of you who have only been educated in our public schools probably believe he was only after Jews, but Hitler also planned to eliminate blacks, gypsies, and anyone who was physically handicapped.
The left-wing’s “master plan” concerns itself with the elimination of what they consider the main threat to their agenda: Christianity. Liberals want abortion on demand, homosexual marriage, full government control of our children, the ability to censor any speech or thought with which they disagree, and a socialist nation that is part of (or preferably controlled by) a powerful One-World Government. Christians stand in their way, and therefore must be crushed.
They can’t advertise, “We hate Christianity, and plan to destroy it,” any more than Hitler could have announced his true intentions before he was in power. So they must follow Hitler’s example. Hitler incited hatred for the Jews, blaming them for all the problems of the German economy and society. He portrayed them as money-grubbing thieves who took advantage of ordinary people. Once many of the people hated the Jews, it was easy for Hitler to kill them.
The liberals portray Christians as evil, bigoted and close-minded. It has been a long process, but over the past few decades, they have achieved major victories. They have removed prayer (even voluntary prayer) from schools. They have succeeded in removing the Ten Commandments (the basis for all our laws) from many courthouses. Now they want to remove Christmas.
A foul-mouthed local talk-show host here in South Florida, Randi Rhodes, was ridiculing pastors for saying that there was a deliberate attempt to remove all references to Christmas. She said, “That’s ridiculous. The government just wants to make sure everything is fair.” Really? Check out these recent news stories:
• A fourth-grader in Ephrata, Pennsylvania, was prohibited from handing out religious Christmas cards to classmates.
• Two middle school students in Rochester, Minnesota, were disciplined for wearing red and green scarves in a Christmas skit and for ending the skit by saying, "We hope you all have a merry Christmas."
• A Frederick County school employee was told by an administrator that employees would be prohibited from handing out Christmas cards in the school because cards with a Christian message "may not be a legally protected right on a public school campus."
• Two ninth-graders in Plymouth, Massachusetts, were told they could not create Christmas cards that say "Merry Christmas" or depict a nativity scene.
• A teacher in Plymouth, Illinois, was warned by her principal not to read a book about Christmas to her second-grade students. The book was in the school's library.
• The superintendent of the Silverton, Oregon, school district had students remove all "religious" holiday decorations from their lockers but allowed secular decorations.
• The county school board in Covington, Georgia, deleted the word "Christmas" from the school calendar after the American Civil Liberties Union threatened legal action.
• New York public schools allow the display of the Jewish menorah and the Muslim star and crescent, but not the Christian nativity.
• Fran Levy, principal of the Thomas Jefferson Magnet School in Flushing, New York, issued a memo on Nov. 30 in which she urged teachers to "bring in Muslim, Kwanzaa, and Jewish secular symbols. I would like to display these religious symbols equally," she said. Apparently this “educator” doesn’t know that Kwanzaa is a not a religious holiday.
Friends, this nation was founded because people like these far-left liberals persecuted European Christians to the point where they had to risk their lives crossing the ocean to find religious freedom. The very fabric of our society, our laws, our morality, our national generosity are based on the Word of God and the love of God. That love was epitomized when the Father sent His only Son, Jesus, to this world to save us from our sins on the first Christmas Day.
Don’t let them steal Christmas from our nation. Stand up for your rights. Do it in love, but don’t be afraid to fight for what is right. If we allow this to happen, next it will be illegal to wear a cross. Then it will be illegal to share the love of God with anyone who doesn’t come to a church. Then they will close down the churches, as they did in Russia.
Christ came into this world to bring God’s love to lost humanity. He doesn’t hate these people who hate Him. Nor do we. We understand that they are lost, confused, and bitter. During this wonderful season, reach out to those around you who don’t understand that we have been commissioned by Christ to help them, not to hurt them. Show them that Christians are not bigoted because we believe the Bible. Demonstrate the love of God that was made available to all because Jesus came into this world and sacrificed His life for them.
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