Merry Christmas (Please Don’t be Mad at Me)

Within the next week or so, I will send my stepson to the attic — I am such a wicked stepmother — so that he can haul down our considerably large collection of Christmas decorations. Then he, my husband and our oldest daughter will spend the better part of an afternoon putting up the Christmas lights while I try to put together our Christmas tree with our three younger children underfoot, begging to go outside so that they can get themselves tangled up in the wires (which resemble a diagram of the Internet when laid out on the lawn) and drive their father crazy.

Later that same evening, our family will decorate the Christmas tree while listening to classical and popular Christmas music. We will hang our Christmas stockings on the fireplace mantle and set up our Nativity scene.

I will take the children to our local mall to visit Santa Claus and to the local discount outlet to buy Christmas outfits for them to wear in our family Christmas picture and then to our extended families’ big Christmas party (where we will greet one another with cheerful intonations of “Merry Christmas!”). We will send Christmas cards to our family and friends¹ and we will open our Christmas presents on Christmas morning, after which we will attend the Christmas service at our local church. Finally, after the children have finished using their new toys to make a colossal mess of our living room, we will sit down and eat our Christmas dinner — but not before saying our Christmas prayers.

Our family has been celebrating Christmas this way for a number of years without the ACLU or any other organization getting in our way and this year will be no different because our family still has the right to observe our cultural and religious traditions and ceremonies however we so choose, regardless of the silly and unfounded notion — a Christmas tradition since the late 1950s when America’s courts and retail outlets began to earnestly recognize that not all Americans are Christian — that the ACLU “grinch” wants to steal Christmas.

I’m a card-carrying member of the ACLU and I have no desire whatsoever to stop anyone from celebrating Christmas or any other religious holiday. Our family’s right to mark the birth of Christ in the manner to which we are accustomed does not include some imaginary “right” to impose our beliefs upon the public square, as if we are entitled to preferential treatment simply because a majority of Americans are Christian.²

Our family doesn’t need — or even want — any form of official approval or other special treatment from our local, state or federal governments — and we certainly don’t need such validations from retail merchants and other agents of commerce — to celebrate Christmas in the fashion we prefer. We believe that Christ gave us His guidance regarding the expression of faith in the public square:

5 And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. 6 But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly. 7 But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking. 8 Be not ye therefore like unto them: for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him. — Matthew 6:5-8 (KJV)

In the last 50 years or so, most of the privileges Christians used to enjoy — and take for granted as a given, particularly the special treatments with regard to Christmas — when Christianity was still considered to be our unofficial state religion have been rightfully and constitutionally rescinded as the result of court decisions on suits brought by the ACLU and other church-state separatist organizations.

Some Christians lament that our progress toward greater religious freedom has caused them to feel marginalized, or even oppressed. Our family will pray that the Lord will shed His grace upon them, that they may have peace and joy instead of wrath and fear this Christmas — as well as the prudence to ignore the hyperbole of the alarmists and fear mongers who wish to exploit their anger and discontent in order to enhance fund raising. And then we will pray for the people in this world who are actually marginalized and oppressed.