Wrestling with the Holidays

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The Christmas/Holiday Tree incident of Boston has sparked allot of discussion about the growing taboo of saying "Merry Christmas". The general attitude I get from most Christians is "It's our holiday and we're not gonna let you steal it from us".

What gets me is we stole the holiday from someone else. For those who haven't taken church History or who were sleeping during it, because of the persecution of the Church in the 1st few centuries AD Christians would use pagan holidays and celebrations as their times of celebration. For example Christmas was assigned the date of December 25 after the last Great persecution (c.330). Prior to this date the birth of Christ was celebrated at different dates each year (http://www.nisbett.com/holidays/christmas_date_and_origin_of.htm).


So really we have no rightful claim to December 25. Sure some people have argued this is the actual birth date of Christ, but we don't know for sure, and allot of other people were born on December 25th does this mean they're not allowed to celebrate their birthdays too?

In case you think I'm saying we need to start saying, "Happy Holidays", I'm not!! I am saying we need to get ride of this "It's our holiday" mentality and realize there are other religions using the date too. Still say "Merry Christmas" and if people get offended, we live in a land of religious freedom, it's about time Christians started having some.

If we really wanna make an impact, I say we stop celebrating on December 25th and move the date to some obscure time of the year, like May or something. Then sales rapidly decline because even "name only Christians" would follow suit. We would disturb the false god, "The almighty Dollar" and Then the TaD worshippers will quickly follow.