The Story of Christmas

Christmas is the most memorable holiday across the world. It’s an event filled with laughter, fun, joy, family, and love. The foundation of this season is an amazing story including shepherds, angels, a baby in a manger, peace on earth, and goodwill to all. It is a time for caroling, snowfall, family time and copious amounts of food, fabulous gifts, and the simple joy of knowing everything in the world is going to be all right.

After 400 years of silence, God spoke that the Messiah is the way to save His people. A temple prophet became mute and his elderly wife became pregnant with a baby they named John. A virgin girl, just 13 years old, was betrothed to her 16-year-old future carpenter husband. She received word, that, by a miracle she will bear a child as a virgin.

The scandal roused her town, and the news of the immaculate conception devastated her betrothed. When Joseph heard of this, he decided to quietly divorce his wife-to-be. Then Joseph had a dream: He was to marry the girl.

America rooted itself in these principles: E Pluribus Unum (out of many, one), In God We Trust, and Liberty.

A ruler’s decree ordered all men to go back to their hometown to register for a regional census. This is how Joseph and his pregnant wife hitched up a donkey to take their three-day journey through the desert to his hometown of Bethlehem. In the throes of contractions, they could not find an inn, so they located a cave and put down some hay.

Mary had the baby, then the heavens broke loose and filled the skies with these words, “Glory to God in the highest and on earth among those whom He is pleased.” Shepherds heard the song and followed a star to the manger to find an infant lying in a feeding trough.

The Messiah had arrived, and the world rejoiced about peace on earth. They heard the cry of Jesus, born in a manger.

The Birth of a Faith

Between the Christmas story of the Messiah who came and the Easter story of the Messiah who died and was resurrected, the Bible ends both events with a faith that revolutionized the world. From these faith principles, Western culture was born. A combination of the morality of Jerusalem and the philosophy of Athens created the Judeo-Christian value system. Without Jesus to cement the notion of personal accountability, we would have no season to celebrate.

Jesus often said, “go and sin no more,” and he preached to “love thy neighbor as thyself.” Jesus also claimed in the radical statement, “I AM God.”

One must recognize that his life, death, and resurrection brought about the process of moral virtues. The embodiment of those virtues is what we all aspire to in our own lives. It all stems from his birth, the essence of the Christmas story, and Christianity’s beginning.

Atheism: There is No God

The institution of the church took hold, and history did not play out too well for many, as theocratic alignments manifested. They were far from the original vision Jesus had in mind when he referred to building his own church. We know some of these hierarchies to be the Roman Catholic Church and the Holy See.

The atrocities committed from theological misnomers resulting in catastrophic actions have stained the RCC to this day. When the Reformation kicked off on October 31, 1617, Martin Luther, a German monk, nailed 95 points outlining the wrongs of the Roman Catholic Church upon the Wittenburg door.

With the onset of the Guttenberg press, the Bible became available for mass consumption, thereby changing the religious order, and a new intellectual Renaissance occurred. With it came mass universities dedicated to the study of theology, philosophy, and the natural world. Art blossomed and music reflected the glory of God.

Paradigm Shifts

Then came the Enlightenment, with rationalist philosophies that emphasized logic and reason. The intellectuals moved away from the roots of the Christian beliefs, and the Marquis de Sade atheist views emerged. After this U-turn from Christianity, Voltaire and Nietzsche posited statements like, “God is dead” and “There is no God.”  While they advanced these ideas, they asked the question, “What would replace God if we took Him out?” They simply left it at that.

Rationalism also helped launch many scientific achievements that we benefit from today. Again, notions of morality, objective truth, and religion disappeared from mainstream society. France adopted Voltaire’s philosophy and began ignoring much of its Roman Catholic roots for staunch individualism. With the void of God, the state entered the foray of sociopolitical arena. Cries of “Liberte, egalite, fraternite!” (liberty, equality, and fraternity) littered the French landscape. Religion turned into a relic of a bygone era where science halls became the new churches, and society viewed morality as nothing more than a social construct.

Forget the effects of the Marquis De Sade’s leftover hedonistic pluralism that left France in a morally bankrupt state. French political philosophy rampantly spread across Europe when Napoleon proceeded to dominate and inject this sociopolitical philosophy everywhere he traveled.

We Are Americans, Not Europeans

On this side of the Atlantic, America rooted itself in these principles: E Pluribus Unum (out of many, one), In God We Trust, and Liberty.

While civil war ravaged the United States, this principle that Dennis Prager affectionately calls the “American Trinity” still held firm as the Founding Fathers intended. Part of what holds the American social experiment together is the implicit nature of “In God We Trust.” It has become the moral backbone that governs human behavior not to steal, murder, covet your neighbor’s property or their spouse, and honoring God.

This also encouraged adhering to the traditions of old, like the celebration and birth of Christ, known today as Christmas. This celebration continued, and still continues today, as the trust in God is the moral spine of the nation.

War Has Come

With the arrival of the hippie movement in the 1960s, along with the intellectual movement known as Postmodernism, the dissolution of objectivity began to root itself in politics, academia, science, philosophy, education, art, music, and even in churches. Subjective reality replaced moral objectivity.

Art gradually became less beautiful. It began to look more and more disheveled and disconnected. Philosophy began spiraling towards nihilism, and it similarly impacted music.

Politics had become dangerous. Communism is the enemy of freedom. Communism is an atheist-created sociopolitical and economic model that has reared its ugly head in the public sphere. Cuba, just 90 miles away with Fidel Castro in charge, scared a great many Americans. John Lennon of the Beatles spouted about how we should imagine there is no sky or hell below us, and we should all be as one, infected the airwaves. Hippies began mass consuming psychotropic drugs, and the decline of morality paved the way for the “free sex” era.

Historically, there have been movements that rose out of the disenfranchised hippies cohort like the “Jesus People Movement.” Then came evangelicalism, and the Christmas story stayed alive. People like the late Chuck Smith, head of the Calvary Chapel movement, and America’s beloved evangelist Billy Graham, would all share the narrative of the Messiah, wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger, as the hope for all of mankind. But atheists, nihilists, naturalists, and communists, who are all rooted in atheism, would push back against this narrative of divinity, hope, and miraculous freedom.

The PC Brigade

Social scientists call this the “Information Age.” It’s also a time when nihilism, social justice, and rampant political correctness have become the newly accepted behavior. Language became altered, as Christ became ejected from his own holiday.

“Merry Christmas” has become offensive to some. Many corporations use the term “Happy Holidays” instead because this generic saying is more in line with clinical, political correctness. American culture has even gone so far as to substitute “Xmas” as a middle-ground replacement word because it somewhat resembles “Christmas.”

Social justice warriors will even claim that Christmas is a culturally appropriative concept, likening it to Joseph, Mary, and Jesus as refugees fleeing their homeland from a Trump-like regime under Herod.

Secularists want to see Christmas stamped out completely. It has gotten so bad in the world regarding Christmas that religious connotations are sometimes labeled and censored as “hate speech.” Even church pastors are sometimes prohibited from preaching about the backbone of Christianity.

Pastors have been fined and jailed for speaking this truth in many countries. Pastors there have wound up behind bars for even mentioning divinity of Christ, the tenet of all Christian belief.

Can you believe that the postmodernists removed reciting the birth of Christ from the Gospel of Luke out of the Charlie Brown Christmas Special, all in the name of political correctness?

Is There Hope?

How we can stop the war on a holiday we have known and cherished for so long? What can we do to quell the onslaught against a traditional Christian celebration that holds so much meaning in the story?

The answer is simple, but difficult to attain. We fight.

Fight for the right of believers to exercise religious freedom. Even if you do not believe it yourself, freedom of religion is fundamental to the American experience.

Christmas is a holiday steeped in faith, rooted in tradition, and celebrated the world over. It brings joy, hope, and rebuilds our faith. Christmas cements the religious beliefs of over four billion people worldwide every year. Stamping out Christmas is not an option.

To abolish Christmas would be like taking out a pillar of civilization. This holiday is a crucial part Christianity. While it might not directly affect the faith, it indirectly affects traditions that we all know and love. if the war ends with Christmas as the casualty, it is a grievous wound which may never heal.