The War on Christmas

In this episode of Christian Mythbusters, Father Jared debunks the myth that there is some kind of “War on Christmas.” You can hear Christian Mythbusters in the Grand Haven area on 92.1, WGHN, on Wednesdays at 10:30am and Sundays at 8:50am. The transcript of the episode is below, or you can listen to the audio at the bottom of the post. This is Father Jared Cramer from St. John’s Episcopal Church in Grand Haven, Michigan, here with today’s edition of Christian Mythbusters, a regular segment I offer to counter some common misconceptions about the Christian faith. Well, with Thanksgiving now behind us, we have fully entered the holiday season. There is pumpkin-spiced everything, more emails to buy stuff in my inbox than I know what to do with, and both lay leaders and pastors all over are trying to figure out how in the world we are going to do Christmas in the middle of a global pandemic—and still keep everyone safe. This also means that are now fully in the season of Christians claiming there is some kind of war on Christmas going on. So, this week, let’s try to bust that myth. After all, the only war on Christmas is the one that exists in the minds of a strange few. The first thing to know is the so-called “War on Christmas” was the invention of conservative commentators like Bill O’Reilly. With others, he claimed that the use of Christmas was being censored or discouraged in favor of the egalitarian term “happy holidays,” and this constituted a war on Christianity itself. The foolishness of this peaked when people object to the “X” in X-mas, a common abbreviation for Christmas. That X, though, is actually just a Greek letter, chi. It is the first letter for Christ in Greek and is a common abbreviation for the name of Christ, particularly in Orthodox iconography. So, X-mas, is just as Christian as Christmas. Let’s put that silliness to bed. As to the idea that the use of “Happy Holidays” is somehow is an attack on Christmas and Christianity itself, let’s be clear. It’s not. After all, I am a Christian priest, one who is deeply devoted to Jesus and the church, one who finds profound meaning in the celebration of Christmas… and yet, I don’t wish people a Merry Christmas during this time of year. The big reason why? Well, it’s not Christmas yet. Christmas falls on December 25th and for the majority of Western Christians, we are not yet in the “Christmas Season,” we are in the Season of Advent, a time of prayerful watching and preparation for the coming of Christ—not only the celebration of his coming as a baby in Bethlehem but also a prayerful watching for his coming again at the end of time when he will set all things right. Advent is a time of darkness, a time of looking honestly at the dark places in our world, the dark places even in our lives. When the rest of society is wrapping itself in tinsel and consumerism, Christians who observe Advent are trying to ask how they need to, in the words of one of our Advent prayers, cast off the works of darkness and put upon us the armor of light, how we need to join with God in bringing light into a dark world. Once Christmas does arrive on December 25th, I will wish my fellow Christians a warm and robust “Merry Christmas.” I’ll also keep doing it, though, for the entire Christmas season, which lasts twelve days actually, just like the song, until January 5th. And I personally don’t just prefer Happy Holidays because it preserves my own freedom to observe the sacred time of Advent instead of celebrating Christmas early. I also like Happy Holidays—both before and during an...