I’m re-posting the most popular content of 2011 over Christmas break.  This entry technically cheated, since it was published once in February and once in December.

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Dear Christendom:

It’s time for a Christmas letter.  I hesitate to publish it, because I didn’t want to ruin anybody’s Christmas.  And by anybody’s, I mean mine.

Here’s the giant idea:  it turns out, after all, that people who don’t believe in Christ…aren’t Christians.

Each year, starting around Thanksgiving, I’m treated to the virulent outrage of hundreds of Christians, each angered over the latest deletion of “Christ” from “Christmas.”

Some years, it’s their city council foregoing the annual nativity scene, or moving it to a less prominent location.  Some years, it’s their favorite store forcing employees to say “Happy Holiday” instead of “Merry Christmas.”  When I was in high school, it was the trend of writing “Xmas” rather than “Christmas.”

And out in deep left field, there are the people who executed Santa.  .

(Please click the link.  It’s spectacular.  But make sure you come back and finish.)

I have no problem with any of those things. I genuinely don’t care where the city nativity scene is; my wife typically puts upwards of five in my living room.  When a cashier tells me to have a happy holiday, I assume, based on the demographics of my community, that she refers to neither Ramadan nor Hannukah.  As for Xmas, all written letters are arbitrarily chosen representations of mental concepts.  I don’t think any of the anti-X-ers are insisting we return the ORIGINAL original wording and say it in Aramaic (although, come to think of it, I’d love to hear “Little Drummer Boy” in Hebrew).

Ultimately, Christmas is about celebrating, with my family and friends, the birth of a man who was God.  And I’m going to celebrate the miracle of that birth, and tell my children about it, regardless of where the Officially Sanctioned State Holiday Manger Scene is located, and regardless of what words the JC Penney sale ad chooses to identify the day.

I find it exceedingly odd that the very people who malign Islam’s tendency to force “belief” at the edge of the sword insist–with no appreciation for irony–that everyone celebrate OUR holiday in a manner that WE approve.  Jesus never forced himself on anyone.

He never said “Behold, I stand at the door and kick the sucker down.”

I have a theory.  I have many, many theories, of which my wife and friends have grown increasingly weary (which is kind of how this blog started).

I think Christians have imposed a faux Christ on the world around them in an effort to insulate themselves from reality.  We force “Merry Christmas” onto the lips of strangers,  and we bemoan the lack of prayer in public schools, and we verily bristle with hostility over any implication that we’re not a Southern Baptist Christian nation—and we do it all because we desire the warm, velvety comfort of being part of the cool kids’ lunch table, where everyone is just as nifty as us, and no one ever causes us discomfort.

That’s the ultimate pipe dream, isn’t it?  If we live in a “Christian nation,” we’ll never see persecution.  If we live in a “Christian nation,” no one will ever be able to disagree with us on fundamental issues.  If we live in a “Christian nation,” we can just be vaguely sort of Christianish and no one will ever question our lifestyle, or our spending habits, our dismissal of the poor, or our complete neglect of the fatherless and the widow.

The problem with the idea of a Christian nation is that Jesus adamantly, insistently, categorically rejected it.  He said some things are Caesar’s, and some things are God’s.  And then he avoided forcing them into an intersection.  He mocked the Roman military parade by riding a donkey into town.  He insisted on a kingdom of heaven, not a heavenly kingdom on earth. Heck, the God-man even dodged his taxes at one point, until he got caught.

He said to Pilate “If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have fought you.”

If!  He said if!  It’s right there!

One could make a pretty strong argument that Jesus Christ was killed by the intersection of religion and government.  He was handed over by priests (who had been coopted by Roman rule) to serve as the most effective vehicle for pacifying the masses.  The modern incarnation of these priests are pastors who embroil their congregation in Target (or Disney or Harry Potter or Ford) boycotts.

Jesus experienced both persecution  and disagreement, and his life culminated in a cross.  And that is decidedly not an attractive lifestyle.

We insist that American is a Christian nation, and we fight to maintain a thin sheen of plastic Christianity in our culture, all so we can be Christian without acting like Christ.

We’ll make sure Christmas bears his name, so we won’t have to.

I’ve only just realized this in the past year or so, and it represents a pretty marked shift from the way I thought for the first thirty years of my life.  I’m not sure how it’s all going to play out just yet.  I have a hunch it’s going to complicate things a bit.

I’d love to hear your thoughts.  Friends disagree with civility.