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KILLING CHRISTMAS:
TAKING THE CHRIST OUT OF CHRISTMAS
By Franklin Sanders
My friend Randy is
angry.
He’s angry because he’s
made out the pattern, and the pattern makes out a plan.
People keep wishing him,
“Happy Holidays.” Not “Merry Christmas,” but “Happy Holidays.” He
even saw a TV commercial for Kay Jewellers. Husband and wife are
sleeping, clock ticks over from 5:59 to 6:00, and husband starts
awake. He jumps out of bed and yells “Honey, get up, it’s the
twenty-fifth!!!” Next, the whole family is bounding downstairs and
you see the tips of a few branches with lights and out comes the
gift. The wife opens it and it’s a beautiful diamond bracelet from
where? Why, Kay’s of course! She is delighted, he is excited and
wishes his lovely wife a “Happy Holiday.”
Don’t you just love the
twenty-fifth?
THE PLAN
Randy is angry. He sees
that the plan aims to remove the name of Christ from the Christmas
holiday, and the public heart.
I also have a friend
that teaches music in public grade schools. All the teachers and
comrade administrators are scared to death she’s going to mention
the “J” word in some song. Even mention of Santa Claus and Rudolph
is verboten. Happy holidays passes muster, or Have a Great
Yule, or even Kwazy Kwanzaa, but you’d better not mention the “J”
word or the “C” word.
Now Newsweek,
that paragon of journalistic integrity, did publish an issue
headlined “The Birth of Jesus” over a sumptuous medieval painting.
However, it was a decoy. The article inside only spent page after
useless page trying to prove that Christmas never happened and that
the virgin birth wasn’t.
If it weren’t so
pitiful, it would be laughable.
EXPUNGING THE “J” & “C”
WORDS
Ever since “J” arose
from the dead that first Easter Sunday, somebody or other -- usually
somebody important from the government -- has been trying to
suppress the “J” word and the “C” word. The elders and chief
priests in Jerusalem bribed the tomb guards to lie about the
resurrection, saying that “J’s” disciples had come and stolen the
body while they slept. (Matthew 28:11-15).
A few years later, the
Roman Caesars discovered that they didn’t like the “J” and “C”
words, either. So they started arresting the people who called
themselves after “C.” They tried to force them to swap loyalty from
the “C” word to the other “C” word, Caesar. It didn’t work.
Using the “J” and “C” words makes people awfully stubborn.
It got worse. Pretty soon
the Romans hated the “C” word so much that they began arresting “C”
word users in droves, burning them at the stake, or beheading them,
or even feeding them to wild animals. When they arrested the old
man, Polycarp of Smyrna, for refusing to give up the “C” word, he
declined, saying, “Eighty and six years have I served him, and in
nothing hath he wronged me; and how, then, can I blaspheme my King,
who saved me?”
And when the governor
threatened to burn Polycarp, well past 80, he only prayed,
“O Lord God Almighty, Father
of thy beloved and blessed Child, J**** C*****, through Whom we have
received full knowledge of thee, the God of Angels and powers, and
of all creation, and of the whole family of the righteous, who live
before thee! I bless thee, that Thou hast granted me this day and
hour, that I may share, among the number of the martyrs, in the cup
of thy C*****, for the resurrection to everlasting life, both of
soul and body in the immortality of the Holy Spirit... For this
reason I also praise Thee for all things, I bless Thee, I glorify
Thee through the everlasting and heavenly high Priest, J**** C*****,
thy beloved Child, through whom be glory to Thee with him and the
Holy Spirit, both now and for the ages that are to come, Amen.”
And so they burned him
alive. Plainly, using the “C” word makes people lose all perspective
on the world. Using the “C” word changes people so much that they
can’t be changed back. Plainly, those who now are trying to expunge
the “C” word from the American vocabulary have reason to fear both
the “C” and the “J” words.
The Romans kept on
trying to outlaw the “C” word, burning, beheading, crucifying,
feeding to wild animals thousands and thousands of “C” word users
for nearly 250 years. Not a bit of it did any good. For every “C”
word user they executed, fifteen or twenty more sprang up to take
his place.
It got even worse.
Romans started using the “C” word, even Romans high in the
government. Finally, in 325 a.d., one of the “C” word users,
Constantine, became emperor and stopped persecuting the “C” word
users. Everybody was free to use both the “J” word and the “C” word
as much as he liked.
But what government can
give, government can also take away. Not long after Constantine
died his nephew Julian began to rise. Outwardly Julian used the “C”
word, but inwardly he hated the “C” word. When he came to power, he
began to persecute the “C” word users again. In 363 a.d. Julian was
wounded in a battle. He was furious because he hadn’t been able to
stop people from using the “C” word. His last disgusted words were
“Nenikeas, Galilaie!” Thou hast conquered, Galilean!
Julian the Apostate hated the “C” word so implacably that he
couldn’t even pronounce it on his deathbed.
MORE “C” WORD HATERS
Space and time would run
out before I could walk through history listing all the “C” word
haters, even if I limited myself to the ones in Europe and Russia.
They flourish in every age. In the 20th century alone three “C”
word haters, Adolf Hitler, Mao Tse-tung, and Josef Stalin, killed
millions of “C” word users. But here we are fifty years later, and
it didn’t do them a parcel of good. Hitler, Mao, and Stalin are all
gone, but the “C” word users are still here, and multiplying.
His enemies are gone,
but the “C” word remains.
For my part, I know what
I’m going to do about the people who are trying to suppress the “J”
and “C” words. I’m not going to shop at their silly businesses, and
I’m going to blast everyone I see with a full, loud, and uncensored,
“Merry Christmas!” I might even start shouting at them, “Happy
Birthday, Jesus!”
And I know what God is
going to do about them, because he has told us in Philippians 2:9:
“God also hath highly
exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name: That
at the name of JESUS every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and
things in earth, and things under the earth: and that every tongue
should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the
father.”
Franklin Sanders
lives in the country near Dogwood Mudhole, Tennessee and publishes a
monthly newsletter, The Moneychanger.
Visit his website at
www.the-moneychanger.com or write him at
Franklin@The-Moneychanger.com. .
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