Misreading Jefferson leads to societal chaos. Secular humanists for decades now have changed the First Amendment, which guarantees religious freedom, into one what one law professor has called “a search and destroy mission” for any sneaky vestiges of religion in the public square. The battle over church and state seems most acute at the season where we remember Christ’s birth.
Every year like clockwork, the Grinches come out of the woodwork in their war against Christmas.
For example, a group of atheists in New York City paid for a billboard ad with an anti-Christmas message: “You know it’s a myth. This season celebrate reason.” Well, I celebrate both Christmas and reason, and I know plenty of intellectuals who do so as well. Just try struggling through one page of St. Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologica and tell me that faith and reason are incompatible. The great appeal of Christmas is that the message is simple enough to satisfy people with all IQ levels.
It is strange when you consider how threatening a manger scene is to some in our society today. It represents a baby. A baby that escaped the clutches of King Herod. A baby that inspires acts of mercy and love all over the world. A baby that received gifts from the wise men—inspiring the annual season of gift-giving. Frankly, I think all the retailers in this country should assemble on December 26 each year, hold hands, and sing, “What a friend we have in Jesus.”
And yet the war on Christmas goes on unabated. It’s as if He is not invited to His own birthday party. A few years ago, children at the Ridgeway Elementary School in Dodgeville, Wisconsin, performing in a “winter program,” were to sing the melody of “Silent Night” but with the words, “Cold in the night, no one in sight, winter winds whirl and bite, how I wish I were happy and warm, safe with my family out of the storm.”[1] The school officials didn’t dare offend anyone with the original words of the classic carol.
But at the end of the day, nothing can stop Christmas. After all, we’re talking about the religion of the catacombs.
Even the Grinch in the contemporary tale couldn’t stop Christmas. Nor can the “holiday parade” organizers of Tulsa, Oklahoma. It’s just too bad that we find that the war on Christmas is now reaching even into a place like Tulsa. New York City I can understand, but Tulsa? With each passing year, it seems that the only principle getting stronger in our culture is the ABC principle—Anything But Christ. And, as we show in Doubting Thomas, the forces of secularism use, no, misuse, Jefferson to get away with it.
[1] Mat Staver, “Christmas According to Marx and Lenin,” (Orlando, FL: Liberty Counsel, 2012). http://www.lc.org/index.cfm?PID=14100&PRID=1269. See also “Ronald Reagan’s Radio Program on Christmas under Communism,” c. 1975-1976 in http://www.lc.org/misc/reagan_christmas.htm.