Every year at this
time there seems to be an augmented attack on those who welcome Christmas into
their lives.
Laura Ingalls Wilder,
author of the “Little House” book series which chronicled a lost era of American history, said of Christmas, “Our
hearts grow tender with childhood memories and love of kindred and we are
better throughout the year for having, in spirit, become a child again at
Christmas-time.”
The Magi, three
wisemen who followed a star to Bethlehem to worship the infant Jesus asked,
“Where is He that is born the King of the Jews?”
Herod, the ruler of
Judea, had been named King of the Jews by the Roman government. Herod became outraged at the Magi’s
question. The birth of the Christchild
threatened his position. Herod cunningly asked them to tell him when they had
found The Child so he might also worship Him.
The Magi were warned in a dream that they should not return to Herod
because of the treachery in Herod’s heart.
Having been ignored by
The Magi, Herod ordered his Roman soldiers to kill every single male child
under two in his kingdom. This atrocious
act of genocide, the Massacre
of the Innocents, was meant to rid the world of the Baby
Jesus.
The birth of Christ is
an incredible event we celebrate each year.
For centuries mankind has kept an appointment with Christmas.
Recently the King
Herods, the Grinches and the Scrooges have tried to marginalize Christianity
and the birth of Christ through the provocation of religious America. The progressive
secularists have adopted three strategies: (1) create a niche for secular humanism among
the unchurched; (2) mimic various aspects of evangelicalism (even as they
target this movement as their main antagonist) and (3) flood the media with
minority victimization and identity politics.
It’s not just the ACLU anymore; it’s also The Freedom From Religion
Foundation, American Atheists, et.al.
We must not throw away our beloved traditions. We must celebrate Christmas and freethinkers
must learn to survive in a religious society.
Christmas signals to
the world that God gave mankind His most glorious gift and 32 years after His
birth Jesus was sacrificed upon a cross and resurrected so that we might have everlasting
life.
The war on Christmas rages on, but I love a quotation that has been
attributed to former President Ronald Reagan: “Christmas can be celebrated in the
school room with pine trees; tinsel and reindeers, but there must be no mention
of the man whose birthday is being celebrated. One wonders how a teacher would
answer if a student asked why it was called Christmas.”
I believe
Dickens had it right in A Christmas Carol. After being visited by the specters of
Christmas Past, Christmas Present and Christmas Future, Ebenezer Scrooge
learned about the blessings of Christmas and said, “I will honor Christmas in
my heart, and try to keep it all the year.”
Where is He
that is born the King of the Jews? He is
in my heart every day in every way. With
the rise
of atheist groups in America, I can only hope that Scrooge’s Christmas
specters visit these misguided men and women, and that they too, will unharden
their hearts and join in the joy of this most holy celebration.
May we always be free to keep our appointment with Christmas.
May we always be free to keep our appointment with Christmas.
I love this quote from Scrooge's nephew as he lectured his uncle about the benefits of Christmas:
ReplyDelete'There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say,' returned the nephew. Christmas among the rest. But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round. . . as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!'
@Stogie,
ReplyDeleteI'm right there with ya. One wonders if, in Dickens' time, he too dealt with the unchurched/agnostic. In any event, I ran across an interesting story that gives us a look into Dickens' heart:
…it seems that in 1862, during Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s visit to London, he had met Dickens. And not only met him but elicited from him the exact admission that we would all have wanted the great man to make as summarized by Dostoyevsky in an 1878 letter to a certain Stepan Dimitriyevich Yanovsky. According to this, the two men met at the offices of Dickens’s own personal magazine, All the Year Round. And here’s how the confessional session went:
“He told me that all the good simple people in his novels, Little Nell, even the holy simpletons like Barnaby Rudge, are what he wanted to have been, and his villains were what he was (or rather, what he found in himself), his cruelty, his attacks of causeless enmity towards those who were helpless and looked to him for comfort, his shrinking from those whom he ought to love, being used up in what he wrote. There were two people in him, he told me: one who feels as he ought to feel and one who feels the opposite. From the one who feels the opposite I make my evil characters; from the one who feels as a man ought to feel I try to live my life. Only two people? I asked.”
Fascinating.
That is interesting. In any case, Dickens was a great writer and author.
Delete