Erasing Christmas
Why Santa is on the Naughty List
The other day, I asked a friend of mine if her 2-year-old was excited about Christmas. She sort of shrugged and said he didn’t really get it yet.
“Do they have Christmas activities at his daycare?”
She shook her head. “Nope. They don’t do anything related to Christmas. Not even Santa Claus.”
I was shocked to hear this. Evidently, schools and day care centers have put a stop to even the secular activities surrounding Christmas. Religious symbols have long been excluded from school Christmas celebrations, but I had no idea that Santa was now banned along with Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.
It’s not just Christmas that’s under fire. A few months ago, I learned that the school district I live in, Central Bucks in Pennsylvania, gives kids the day off for Diwali, a religious Hindu holiday, Eid al-Fitr, a Muslim Holiday, and Lunar New Year, an Asian holiday. They also observe Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah, Jewish holidays.
You know what they don’t observe? Columbus Day, a federal American holiday celebrating the discovery of America. They don’t even call it Columbus Day anymore—it’s now Indigenous People’s Day.
Thanksgiving is also on the chopping block because it’s no longer politically correct to say that Indians and Pilgrims had lunch together. And you can’t do those Thanksgiving plays anymore because dressing up like an Indian is cultural appropriation.
What is going on here?
Here’s what’s going on: our American heritage is being erased.
It starts with Christmas
Contrary to popular belief, traditional Christmas religious symbols are not prohibited in public schools. According to the American Center for Law and Justice:
“[a] nativity scene may be displayed as one item among many secular symbols of Christmas and meet constitutional muster. . . . [But] isolating a nativity scene in such a way as to show government solidarity with the Christian faith violates the Establishment Clause.”
The Establishment Clause is a provision of the First Amendment that prohibits the government from establishing a national religion or favoring one religion over another. It was designed to protect religious organizations from government influence and corruption. But the so-called “separation of church and state” is not in the Constitution—it was never the intention of the framers to remove the Christian faith from public discourse.
According to the Constitution, a school that displays a nativity scene must balance it with secular symbols of Christmas—Santa Claus, etc. But now, even Santa is much too “exclusive” in an increasingly multicultural classroom. There’s no law that says schools have to display symbols of all other religions in addition to Christmas, but schools are under pressure to do just that—it’s far easier to throw Santa under the bus than to accommodate every other culture that wants a ride.
The War on Christmas
This is a term popularized in the early 2000s to push back against the secularization of Christmas and lumping it in with other winter holidays like Hanukkah and Kwanzaa (a holiday created by an anti-Christian, anti-American college professor).
The term “Merry Christmas” has long been replaced with the innocuous “Happy Holidays” or the even more insipid “Seasons Greetings.” Occasionally, some politicians will push back, as President Trump did recently, but for the most part, we have accepted the political correctness of “Happy Holidays” to avoid offending anyone. Christmas, apparently, is very offensive to some people.
In 2002, the New York City Public School System banned Nativity Scenes, but allowed Menorahs and the Muslim Star and Crescent to be displayed.
Most major retailers like Walmart and Target decline to use the word “Christmas” in any of their marketing. Nativity scenes have all but disappeared from public display because of complaints from atheists and non-Christians.
Portland, Oregon, removed the word “Christmas” from its tree-lighting festivities while organizers waved Palestinian flags and led the crowd in chanting “Free Palestine!”
A school in Maryland banned all religious celebrations, including Christmas, and replaced them with “Transgender Awareness Week.”
Drag Queen Story Hours have replaced Christmas-related activities in many elementary schools and libraries across the country.
The mayor of London, a Muslim, tried to cancel a large Christmas gathering in central London, warning the public that a “far-right” group might “cause problems” for Muslims—by singing Christmas carols.
Meanwhile, many Christmas events in Europe have been cancelled due to the fear of terrorist attacks.
David Spade recently criticized a shopping mall for holding a “tree-lighting ceremony” without mentioning the word “Christmas.”
A library in Massachusetts took down its Christmas tree after it claimed it “offended some customers.”
A city in California replaced its Christmas decorations with peace signs and generic lighting.
These are just a few examples of how Christmas is being systematically erased.
Our Christian Heritage
America is a Christian country, founded on Judeo-Christian principles. According to an influential 1984 study, the Bible was the most cited source by the nation’s founding fathers. 55 of the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence were Christians. The Declaration famously declares that all men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with inalienable rights: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. In the eyes of God, all human beings are equal and deserving of justice and freedom.
This doctrine comes straight from the Bible. Since every human being is created in the image of God, every human being has value. This is the truly revolutionary part of the American Revolution. The Judeo-Christian ethos is the foundation of our rights and freedoms. Christianity was the moving force behind the Abolitionist movement, the creation of the hospital system, and the principles of the justice system.
Yet the Bible, a critical document in creating our nation, has been removed from public school curricula and is not even referenced in AP American history study guides.
Bad things happen when Christianity is removed from a nation’s governing principles. The 20th century is a case in point.
The way things have been in the west for two thousand years is a direct and undeniable consequence of the overarching influence of Christianity. Our ethics, our morality, the laws by which we live, commitment to the sanctity of the individual … all are founded upon the Christianity of our forebears. In more recent centuries deluded and dangerous people believed they had the wit and the power to set aside Christian ethics and morality and to replace them with their own ideologies. I invite you to consider the worst horrors of the 20th century and notice how well those experiments went. 150 million dead, and counting.
Neil Oliver, GBN
The United States has the largest Christian population in the world, with about 235 million adherents. Our Constitution guarantees freedom of religion, meaning Americans are free to practice any religion they choose without fear of persecution. This sounds great until you consider how Christianity itself is being attacked by those who consider it a threat to democracy itself.
Charlie Kirk put it most succinctly:
…the body politic of America was so Christian and was so Protestant, that our form and structure of government was built for the people that believed in Christ our Lord. One of the reasons we’re living through a constitutional crisis is that we no longer have a Christian nation, but we have a Christian form of government, and they’re incompatible. You cannot have liberty if you do not have a Christian population.”
In our post-Christian society, the Bible is no longer the harbinger of morality and truth. People today want to decide what is true for t
hemselves, based on their own feelings.
This reminds me of an often-repeated passage in the Book of Judges:
“In those days, there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes.” Judges 18:1, 19:1, 17:6, 21;25.
There is most definitely a war on Christmas. But Christmas is only the beginning. Be prepared for more battles to come.
Very sad state of affairs.