The Christ in Christmas

To make up for days of slacking off on posting, two in one day! :)

Andrew M. Greeley wrote an interesting editorial about Christmas as a holiday. I don't agree with everything he writes; I for one like to hear O Holy Night and other Christmas hymns mixed in with the secular holiday music on the radio, and I'm indifferent to whether or not there are public displays of the nativity. I like both the secular and the religious aspects of the holiday. That said, I think he makes a very good point in contrast to the recent move by some evangelicals to boycott stores with secular Christmas greetings. He writes:

So with all due respect to our "evangelical" brothers and sisters who fight to "take back" Christmas, I am arguing, with some irony, that they've got it all wrong.

We don't have to take it back, because no one has ever taken it away (even the New England puritans who kept public schools in Boston open on Christmas in the late 19th century). Nor can anyone ever take it away.

The Light came into the darkness, and the darkness cannot put it out.

I don't know. I like my blended holy/secular holiday. But I also completely agree with the idea that we Christians don't have to force our holy day down the rest of the world's collective throats.

I also have to smile at this bit of almost-snark from Mr. Greeley:

(Patently, I use the word "Christian" in an extended sense and not in the sense of the Bible Christians for whom most of the rest of us who follow Jesus of Nazareth are not really Christians, especially Catholics.)

You go, Andrew! I'm more worried about putting the "Christ" back in "Christian" and rescuing that term from the evangelicals than I am putting the "Christ" back in "Christmas" and rescuing what is largely a secular holiday anyway from non-believers.