Happy Holidays! Merry Xmas!

Bah! Humbug!

I'm getting tired of Christians at Christmas. Just this week I saw a post on FaceBook, a picture of a nativity scene, with the caption that FaceBook had banned such pictures. Never mind that the post was not removed. That one comes around every year and has been proven time and again to be untrue.

I'm not sure where this obsession with wanting to feel persecuted for one's faith comes from. But come on! It isn't happening. There is no war on Xmas. Xmas is alive and well in all its glory, sacred and secular.

I'm going to get mail because I used X in place of Christ even though the use of X for Christ goes back long before the word Christmas was born.

So some people prefer for you to say, "Happy Holidays!" instead of "Merry Xmas!" So what! "Happy holidays" is quite useful, killing two turtle doves with one stone.

If you worked where I work, it just doesn't feel right to say, "Merry Christmas!" to an observant Jew, not that any of them I know would truly take offense.

And what his "holiday" anyway? It's a holy day. So you could say that when someone wishes you a happy holiday, they are recognizing that you are celebrating something holy.

But I don't know. Maybe it just makes people feel more devout if they think they are being persecuted.

I hear too many sermons this time of year on recapturing the true meaning of Christmas. Many of these inevitably turn into a rant on commercialism and the fact that someone somewhere called the tree a holiday tree.

It seems like a wasted opportunity to me. While wasting words on how we are approaching the end of Christendom as we know it, they might instead be truly telling a story of hope and redemption, a story that God came down.  Someone might be waiting to hear such a story.

I don't think God cares if you say "Happy Holidays." I don't know. He didn't tell me that. I don't think Jesus cares if you celebrate his birthday or not. He honestly doesn't seem so much a birthday kind of guy. I mean he did seem to like a good party but in the end, I don't think he'd give a rat's, eh, wait, maybe I'm starting to rant. From all I see of Jesus, he wouldn't have been preaching about how the nation was going to hell in a hand basket because people aren't allowed their nativity scenes in public spaces. In fact, he'd be more likely to come into your church building and turn over your American flags, Xmas trees and offering plates and yell, "What do you think this is all about?"

I think it is easy for the church to take the easy road. It's easier to talk about the meaning of Xmas and lament its demise. It is an easy sermon to preach. 

What's hard is to do what Jesus did. If you believe the narrative, he got pretty humbled. From the throne of heaven to a stable in Bethlehem, born to a poor family, and you know the rest of the story. It was quite a come down. We Americans aren't good at that.

Even if it should turn out to be that Christians in America are persecuted, should that surprise? Christians should be surprised that they aren't. And if they are not feeling the scorn of the world, they should wonder what they are doing wrong. 

So far I don't see it. Not here. There are Christians in the world severely persecuted even today in the 21st century. Some say more there are more people killed for their faith today than ever before. It's just what I heard. You can research it.

Bing Crosby surely started the war back in 1942 in the Xmas classic film Holiday Inn when he sang, "Happy Holidays" instead of Merry Christmas, darling. Maybe that's where we started on the slippery slope down Mount Crumpet.

I think that people spend their time ranting about the war on Xmas have a problem with the meaning of these tidings of great joy. I don't think they believe it enough. Somehow, they think this two-thousand year-old story is going to be lost. 

Maybe they are right. It is being lost. It is being lost to those who might hear the story of heaven come down to earth, Emmanuel, God with us. Instead they hear that Xmas is being taken away because some don't want a nativity scene on the courthouse lawn or some store employees are asked to say, "Happy Holidays."

If concern about how people don't celebrate an ancient birthday the way you think they should is the biggest thing you have to concern yourself with at this time of year, I'd say you need to get out more.

Turn off the noise. When people start talking about the war on Christmas, turn them off. The true message is cheapened. It is making good news bad news. If it bothers you that Christmas is being lost, then I suggest you turn off CNN, FoxNews and the Kardashians and get out and be meaning of Christmas.

It was Jesus himself who said why he came. It was Jesus himself who said why he came, "...to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free." St. Luke 4:18

Good grief people! Where have you been? No one can keep Christmas from coming. Haven't you seen Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas? It came! It came just the same.

World AIDS Day 2015

If you know me at all, you know I have an obsession with genocide. I have read volumes and volumes about the Holocaust. But I've also read much about Rwanda, Cambodia, and Bosnia as well as Stalin's Soviet Union and Mao's China. If I can come up with on reason I'm so interested in these morbid events, it would come down to trying to understand how the world let it happen.

And on this World AIDS Day, I'm reminded of a holocaust that happened right here in America in my lifetime.

Again I'm left wondering, "How did we let this happen?" Yes, it was a little different. This was a terrible disease killing people instead of madmen.

I'm always most particularly interested how the Christian church responded to all of these holocausts. I can only read about all of these massive human slaughters. But this one I lived through. And during the height of the AIDS epidemic of the 80s and 90s, I had the vantage point of viewing it as a closeted gay man from inside the evangelical world.

When AIDS hit, I was just out of high school. I entered a conservative, evangelical seminary to train for ministry. This was in 1983. I spent the next ten years at evangelical colleges, as a student, undergraduate, graduate and then as an employee of a parachurch organization with offices on some of these conservative colleges.

AIDS was huge news in those years. Not on our Christian college campuses. We had chapel twice a week. I rarely missed. I don't ever remember AIDS being a topic of any chapel session. I don't remember it ever being talked about in class. Well, wait, it was mentioned a few times, the gist being the "reap what you sow" line.

It was a fearful time. Huge numbers of Americans polled in the early years believed that people with AIDS should be tattooed or put into special camps. I get it. It was a terrifying disease and so little was known about or how contagious it might be.

Still, the American churches did so little to help. Oh yes, you can find a handful wonderful examples of Christians and churches here and there who developed wonderful ministries to help people with AIDS. But I was on the inside and I, too, stood by, afraid of everything, especially myself.

Indeed even this very day, a Christian minister friend posted the "reap what you sow" passage from Galatians. I don't know if this is coincidental on World AIDS Day or not.  I’m not saying “reap what you sow” isn’t a true maxim.  Of course, it is.

The church did not lead. The American evangelical church was happy to let the government deal with it. The problem was that the Reagan administration was doing practically nothing. Indeed it took Reagan years to even publicly utter the word AIDS after over 20,000 people had died.

Gay communities all over the country took the lead to take care of the dying when often even the suffering ones’ own families refused.  And they did a remarkable job. The organizations started in the homes of dying people to care of other dying people have become benchmarks for how to do it for all kinds of charities. And it brought LGBT people together like never before.

But where were the evangelical churches? I think I know. AIDS proved them right in their minds. Those people were getting what they deserved. It was solving a pesky problem. Indeed the only thing I heard in my circles in those years went along the lines of "They brought his on themselves."

Even if that were true, it isn't how Jesus taught his followers to love.