A new era for Christmas?

I was "playing" Farmville last week on Facebook (if you haven't experienced it, I'm not sure you really play Farmville. I'm also not really sure why I spend any time with it except that it's the only place where you can grow a great harvest of fresh strawberries in only 4 hours). When I logged on I found that I had been given a "holiday tree." Apparently a holiday tree is like a Christmas tree except it's politically correct. I don't know what makes a Christmas tree politically incorrect. The holiday has been tamed enough (see a great blog on this subject here) that a Christmas tree seems pretty inoffensive. It made me think about

I'm not going to pull out my Christian history books to look up all the details, but I think it's pretty well known that before December 25th was chosen as the day to celebrate the birth of Jesus it was a pagan holiday. The story goes that Christians knew the day would always be a feast day for most people so they coopted it and made it a great Christian holiday. This makes great sense as a public relations move and fits right in with the Imperial Christianity era that begins with Constantine in the 4th century. December 25 rolls around and Christians have a great opportunity to witness to their faith with a celebration at the same time that others are celebrating for a different reason.

Fast forward 1600 years or so and we see the exact reverse happening. Very few humanists and atheists suggest that we eliminate Christmas as a holiday. Instead, they are trying to redefine it. December 25th is to engrained in our minds and our common experience as a celebration for it to simply go away. Instead, it is being changed by the dominant culture into a non-religious, non-threatening holiday. Christmas will remain, but devoid of any of it's Christian meaning in the same way that the pagan celebration day remained a celebration day but devoid of its original meaning.

It seems to me that as Christians we have a couple choices. One option is to actively resist this movement. Vocally tell people to leave Christmas alone and keep it a Christian holiday. In a country that values separation of church and state this might mean there are no school "holiday" parties, much less Christmas parties. Maybe there's not even a "winter" or "Christmas" break. Instead of opposing what we perceive as radical atheists trying to take God out of the schools and government, we might support those decisions so that we can leave God in the holidays that we cherish. Perhaps we should be cheering the ACLU and others on - yes, the Nativity scenes do have religious meaning. Yes, the Christmas tree does represent a relgious holiday.

A second option is to let them have it. Surrender Christmas to the non-Christians. There's at least as much evidence for a summer or fall date of Jesus' birth than a winter date. Why not pick another date for the celebration? Or perhaps as many early Christians did we should reemphasize Epiphany

So we face a new era for the holiday celebrated on December 25: First was the pagan celebration, then the Christian celebration of Christmas, and now something else - either a reinvigorated Christian celebration or a completely vapid secular celebration. I think we have some choice in what this new era will be like.