Each year Fox News broadcasts footage on the "war on Christmas," noting businesses that substitute the word "holiday" for "Christmas," or school districts that bow to non-Christian parents' demands to end singing of "Silent Night".
The idea vehemently defended by Fox is the Christmas of modern culture. But the first Christmas did not take place in a decorated home, around a tree bright with ornaments and flanked with piles of gifts, with the whole happy family gathered together singing carols. It was not announced by department store fliers, displayed in colored lights, or celebrated with warm beverages and frosted cookies.
Rather, the Creator of the Universe came to earth as a tiny infant in a dark and dangerous time of fear and repression. The Lord of All was born to a teenage mother, far from home and family support, isolated and rejected, in an animal shelter. His birth was not announced on the lawns of the government offices to the citizens of occupied Rome. It was announced to non-citizens on the outskirts of town, the working-class shepherds. They would welcome the sign: a baby in a manger. Christ the Savior is born, poor and homeless to non-citizens from Nazareth.
And the birth of the King of Kings was announced through the appearance of a star. This sign was heralded by foreign intellectuals. They traveled far to welcome the Christ. But it was not "good news" to the entrenched powers. King Herod wielded his mighty arm to defend the empire by ordering the slaughter of every male child in Bethlehem under the age of two.
So Christmas really happened first in violence, fear, grief and despair. "On those living in the land of the shadow of death, a light has dawned." --Isaiah 9:2b.
On one hand, Fox News defends the celebration of the Christmas holiday. And then, commentators herald the steady promotion of consumerism, the defense of wealth and power (and bonuses for bank execs), and regularly belittle or attack efforts to overcome poverty or protect the vulnerable.
On the other hand, the first Christmas offers the joyful promise of peace and the hope of reconciliation with God and among people. No other religion has its God becoming flesh, totally human and poor, born in such a vulnerable and dangerous environment with government oppression, yet bringing hope of complete salvation. Christ the Savior is born.
Fox News proffers the constant drumbeat of war, the reliance on military solutions to social conflict, the demonizing of our enemies, and trust in American dominance. It never mentions credible reports of over 160 children killed by American predator drones in Pakistan since we came up with this new weapon (civilian reports top 300, Bureau of Investigative Journalism, Aug 2011).
The real Christmas lifts up the Virgin Mary's song of praise for her baby boy: "He has brought the mighty down from their thrones, and lifted the lowly, he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich empty away." How could Glen Beck, Sean Hannity, and Ann Rand avoid labeling this language from Mary's Magnificat as "class warfare?"
The real war on Christmas is lost to those who bury their noses in the sand of our commercial culture. The effect is the same whether we never sing Silent Night in school, or we spin ourselves into a holiday frenzy that leaves no room for Christ. Christmas without God's true Salvation through Christ—the transformation of hearts, minds, people and powers—is a hollow shell. Talking only about personal individual salvation, as powerful and important as it is, misses most of the Bible's reason for the season, and hides the real war on Christmas
Is there room this year, in our safe, warm inn, to welcome a homeless, vulnerable stranger, the Son of God? Is there room in the most powerful nation on earth to trust in the Prince of Peace?
Here's Jim Wallis or Sojourners summary of this cultural war on Christmas, to whom I credit several of the ideas of my column:
http://www.sojo.net/blogs/2011/12/15/real-war-christmas-fox-news
The following is continued from Big Horn County News:
Quote from Jim Wallis:
"The real Christmas announces the birth of Jesus to a world of poverty, pain, and sin, and offers the hope of salvation and justice."
The first chapters of each of the four Gospels in the New Testament tell the story. Christmas is about the real presence of the Living God, Creator of the Universe, among us in real flesh—a tiny, vulnerable infant. The theological term for this reality is incarnation. No other religion has its God becoming flesh, prone to all the fallibility of humanity, born to a poor and homeless young mother in the midst of a military occupation by an empire.
"God's becoming flesh — human — and entering into history in the form of a vulnerable baby born to a poor, teenage mother in a dirty animal stall."—Jim Wallis of Sojourners
An interesting element is the origin of many of our commercial symbols of Christmas. Many of these originated with the Roman Empire, in its efforts to Christianize Europe, adopted the pagan symbols of the solstice celebrations. This includes the Christmas tree, the lights, and the date of December 25. The Empire just took away the pagan gods and left the symbols and the festivals and the date intact. But this history of tainted symbols has nothing to do either with the Bible's Christmas story, and while an interesting conflict, doesn't touch the Bible's allusion to a need for peace then and now.
While not overtly a Christmas story, Dr. Chi Huang's recounting of his medical service to street children of Bolivia comes as close as I have seen to a modern Christmas story. It really does reflect the values and struggles of the first Christmas story. This book is definitely adult material, When Invisible Children Sing, 1997. The author is a family friend.
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David Graber
Hardin, MT 59034
www.greenwoodfarmmt.org
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