So many people talk about war on Christmas but fail to grasp
just how wide the scope of said War is. I believe most people on the right
would agree on the fact that some sort of War is being waged against those of
us who hold Christmas celebrations. This year in particular, as the falsehoods
of the pandemic has led to new battles that many Christians and Western
countrymen seem not willing to face. But not only must we face these
challenges, we must win them.
One can watch on the History Channel (or on Youtube, like I
did) a series that purports to showcase Christmas traditions from decades past.
I tuned in to this out of mild interest, as traditions are something I am
always eager to learn more about. Sadly, I tuned out after a few minutes as I
realized this multi-part series was nothing more than a gross glorification,
not of changing traditions, but of changing consumerist tastes. “Guess what
toys kids begged their parents for in the 70s? You’ll never believe what
Christmas song topped the charts in ‘87!” That sort of thing. But it did get me
wondering, where did all the old stories of the Christmas traditions go to? You
know the ones. About why we bring trees in the house and light them, or the
early myths of St. Nicholas and St. Peter, or the traditions of Yule Logs and
Wreaths. Maybe this was never taught in public schools. I only remember when I
was a young lad and my parents, indulging my curiosity in histories and
traditions, bought me a few books on Christmas traditions, books which I read
and re-read voraciously.
There was a short time when I was very young that I remember
we did not have Christmas trees or lights or any decorations. My family
believed at that time that trees and wreaths and all that were evil and demonic
due to their pagan, non-Christian roots. For a few years, we would celebrate
Christmas with a more quiet and somber tone, reading from the Bible
in the morning, exchanging a few gifts and later eating heartily. It did not
take long for us to return to more traditional roots and we turned the
Christmas decorating into a family affair. Ornaments were hand-crafted each
year and some were passed down from previous generations. While still somber, a certain familial joy had crept in with the celebration of tradition.
I think a lot of Christians get confused about traditions.
Many, while rightly throwing away the brazen commercialism of Christmas the
world has placed upon that holy day, have also wrongly thrown out the
celebratory nature of Christmas altogether. I know of many sects of Christianity
that do not celebrate Christmas in any way, as they perceive in it some form of
evil that must be rejected. For some Christians it is not only the commercial
aspect that must be rejected, but the traditions as well, as they harken back
to ancient pagan rituals. These pagan roots of tradition have spoiled the whole
barrel for these Christians, so they reject Christmas and all of its joy.
This has unfortunately led to us opening a new front of
assault for the enemy, as they can now easily divide and conquer. Not only can
our enemies now wage war for us on a Christian front, but they can seek to
separate us from our past and attack us on the point of tradition as well.
Since so many of us are spending so much time asking what is right and what is
evil, what is pagan and what is Christian, we fail to see that everything gets
slowly replaced by the monolithic corporate entities of store savings cards and
Coca-Cola salesmen. We have allowed the enemies of Christmas to turn us against
each other for their own personal gain.
We must realize this about our enemies. Many of them do not
believe in Christ. They simply choose to live in ignorance, or even outright
rejection of our Lord and Savior. That is a sad fact of the world, but it is
true. They do not want us to celebrate Christmas because they do not want us to
give God the glory, they do not want us to remember Jesus and they most
certainly do not want us to celebrate his birth and later, his subsequent
victory over Death. Jesus is anathema to these people, these Prometheans of the
world. They care only for materialistic gain and wealth. Anything they can do
to harm us and by extension, Christ, they will attempt. Even if that means
concocting a mild flu-like virus pandemic to force you to stay indoors and not gather with
your family to pray and sing praises to our King.
Likewise, many of these enemies do not understand our
culture. Look at the faces of those who spearhead anti-Christmas movements.
They have foreign faces and come from faraway lands, lands without 2,000 years
of Christian history and thousands more years of Greek, Roman and Western
roots. These lands may not even celebrate a Winter Solstice, as winter could
never appear on their sunny, sub-tropical or oriental shores. Yet they come here, to
America and the West, and we allow them to sit in positions of power and they
in turn look down on us in disdain. After all, we do not understand them or
their culture. Neither do they care to understand ours. Our Christmas to them
is an oddity. Our brightly-lit trees, our carols and Christmas treats are as
foreign to them as camels, jungles, or pagodas would be to us. They do not know
or do not care to know of the traditions with roots in ancient Celtic, Teutonic
or Roman beliefs. It is all foreign nonsense to them, yet they are not in a
foreign land. They are here, in our country. They are in your public offices
and on your screens, telling you how to live your life.
Of course, these types of enemies do not understand the
Christ traditions either. In fact, such religious traditions may be abhorrent
to them, these enemies of ours with their own righteous beliefs totally
opposite to ours. If our beliefs are sacrilegious to their way of life and they
are put in positions of power, why wouldn’t they seek to stamp out our
traditions any way they could? We are to be more accepting, we are told by more
of the same enemies, even as they tear down our Nativities and cancel our town
traditions. After all, it is a multi-cultural society now. Not to mention a
sick one that must seek to avoid contact with others of our kind unless we
catch the plague. Unfortunately for us and our families, we are beginning to
slip to the bottom of the caste system.
We do not need to let it be this way. As Christians, we can
do much to avoid the worldlier, commercial aspects of Christmas while still
practicing our traditions. I myself see nothing wrong with decorating a tree.
We have Christianized this ancient pagan tradition and made it our own. No
longer do we use it to celebrate Wotan and the eternal forest, but now we
celebrate Christ and his eternal gift of Life. Yet this tradition connects us
to our ancestors, reminding us of the darkness we have risen from and overcome
with the help of Christ Jesus. We can look back with pride at our hardy
forefathers who struggled through the long, dark winters that only Northern
Europe could make and realize that some of that same hardy spirit lives on in
us today. Christmas can and should be a celebration of family. It is a
celebration of our immediate family and the joy we can bring one another. It is
a celebration of our ancestral family and the folk spirit that we carry on by
torchlight. And most importantly, it is a celebration of Christian family, as
we realize that we are brought into the realm of the Eternal One because His
Divine Son decided to make Himself a little lower than the angels in a little
town in Judea over 2,000 years ago.
