Culture

Have a Merry - - - - -mas?

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Tim Wildmon
President, AFA
December 19, 2000

You may have noticed the news item a couple of weeks back. The city council of Little Rock, Arkansas, voted to change the name of their traditional December parade–always known as the Christmas parade--to the now politically correct title "Holiday parade." That’s right, the word "Christmas" was too religious and might offend non-religious people or people of other faiths thought the city officials–so they changed the name. I can’t wait until they find out the word "holiday" actually means "holy day." What to do then?

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is in the deep South. The Bible belt.

Staying in Dixie, you may have read that some school districts in Georgia have instructed their teachers not to refer to "Christmas break" as "Christmas break" anymore. Too specifically Christian. Might offend somebody. It is now to be called "winter break." This kind of thing is happening all over the country.

Just a couple of weeks ago the city manager of Eugene, Oregon, Jim Johnson, issued a directive banning–get this–Christmas trees from public places. You read that right he banned Christmas trees–uh, winter trees–from public places because the tree is a religious symbol and therefore–according to Mr. Johnson–cannot be displayed on city property. In his memo to all city employees, Johnson said that while it could be contended that the Christmas tree is a "holiday" or "seasonal" decoration "it is just as clearly a decoration associated with a religious holiday or tradition." Well, you go get ’em, Mr. Johnson! Round up those first amendment violating trees.

Seems after some firemen objected, Johnson offered a compromise that would allow ------mas trees to be displayed on ------mas Eve and ------mas Day so long as not one person complained. If so, the trees must be removed. By order of the law. Said he was making this order in the name of diversity. So let’s see. The way to promote diversity and tolerance is to disallow the ------mas tree?

Writes Jewish columnist Don Feder: "I’m dreaming of a white holiday. I’ll be home for holiday; you can count on me. How the Grinch stole holiday. If you are over a certain age (say 40) you can’t help but notice how Christmas is fading from our culture. I don’t mean the banishment of crèches from the courthouse steps or the prohibition of Christmas carols in public schools, due to liberal misinterpretation of the First Amendment. But beyond the public square, Christmas is rapidly being replaced with a generic holiday that, by coincidence, comes around December 25."

As far as I can tell, the only Christmas television cartoon (of the many) that still has the real message of Christmas in it is a Charlie Brown Christmas. When I was growing up there was one called "The Night the Animals Talked" about the manager scene. But it has long since gone away.

Beyond what we are losing of the real meaning of Christmas in America today, it is the true loss of our Christian heritage that troubles me most. Historical revisionism has taken over in many areas of academia and journalism. (For the doubters, I would commend the works of Peter Marshall, Jr., David Barton, Dr. Catherine Millard, Gary DeMar or an excellent book titled "Never Before in History, America’s Inspired Birth" by Gary Amos and Richard Gardiner.) If you go back and read the writings of our Founding Fathers it is clear that our country was given birth by people the vast majority of whom were Christian. It was their faith that motivated them. Wrote John Quincy Adams–our sixth president–"The highest glory of the American Revolution is this: it connected, in one dissoluble bond, the principles of civil government with the principles of Christianity." That is why for nearly two centuries we had prayer and Bible reading in our schools. Nobody thought anything about it. The Christian religion was part and parcel of the American social fabric.

For some reason, many people today want to censor out anything Christian about America’s past.

Two years ago I was reading the fourth grade history book my daughter was learning from. We came to the section about the Mayflower Compact. The book spent three pages discussing this document without having the actual document itself included. The textbook stressed solely the document’s emphasis on how William Bradford and the pilgrims were to order self government. I thought that curious, why not print the Mayflower Compact itself instead of spending so much time talking about what the Mayflower Compact said? What is the length, I wondered? It must be too long to be included. It had been several years since I had read it, so I looked it up again in the encyclopedia . Nope. Not too long. It’s actually very brief, maybe 200 words long. It must have been a cold day on Cape Cod. No time to sit around making something long and wordy when it didn’t need to be. But, after reading it was clear why it was excluded from my child’s public school textbook. The word "God" is used four times in a positive context. Add that to the explicit phrase found in the middle of the Compact which states "...for the glory of God, and the advancement of the Christian faith..." as the primary reason for the pilgrims coming to this land, then I knew why it had been omitted.

There is also a move under way today to change the way we measure years from A.D. and B.C. to something called "common era." The abbreviation A.D. is from the Latin Anno Domini, which means "in the year of our Lord." Events before that time are indicated by the abbreviation B.C., which means "before Christ." The CE folks are using the same 2000 years, just taking any identification with Jesus Christ out of it. Coming soon to textbooks near you.

As you can see, this has gotten ridiculous.

The A&E channel is running a very good four hour documentary on the second millennium of Christianity. It is clear from viewing the two part series that no other force had more impact on the development of western civilization and our early American way of life than did Christianity.

Now I’m waiting for the American Civil Liberties Union to bring a suit against the United States of America on the grounds that the Declaration of Independence is unconstitutional because Thomas Jefferson penned the word "Creator" with a capitol C in it. It might not be too long before we see the headline: "Supreme Court rules Declaration of Independence Unconstitutional, Document to be Removed from National Archives."

About the author–

Tim Wildmon is vice president of American Family Association and American Family Radio. He is the co-host of the talk program "Today’s Issues" heard each weekday morning on AFR’s 185 stations. He has appeared on CNN’s "Talk Back Live," written guest editorials for USA Today and has written two books of Christian humor titled I Wonder What Noah Did With The Woodpeckers and My Life As A Half Baked Christian.