Not your Father's Nativity Scene Either.

I find it somewhat ironic that Christmas, celebrated on December 25th, is returning to its pagan roots. December 25th has had significance to pagan religions before Christ was born. It was not until 350AD when Pope Julius I made it the official birthday of Christ did believers begin to celebrate on December 25th and even then the people incorporated their pagan traditions into the celebration of Christ's birth, some even surviving to this day. The actual celebration of Christ-mass began much later in the 1500's.

What am I rambling about? I'm sure that this is not unique to our day; attacks on Christians and Christmas have surely been going on for quite some time. However, I do not remember such a brazenly public attempt to wrestle Christmas away from Christians as in these last few years. An organization of atheists have began a public campaign ostensibly targeted at other atheists who may feel "left out" at Christmas asking the question, "Why believe in a god? Be good for goodness sake." There's always the the passive assault of wishing "Happy Holidays" by the retailers who fall all over themselves to not offend anyone except Christians (what do they mean by "holy-days"?). The Christmas specials avoid the Christ aspect of Christmas and of course all the ads with "x-mas" have been around for ever but still have the effect of being flipped the bird.

The slide of western culture back to pagan celebration on December 25th went a little farther this year when a Dutch gay group announced that they will be modifying the nativity scene a little this year (http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,463546,00.html ) during the ProGay group's celebration. For those whose stomachs have just turned and don't wish to read the entire article about the "Pink Christmas" celebration in Amsterdam, I'll sum it up for you with a quote or two from the article:

"Van Dalen said it was not intended to be offensive, but was meant as a "wink" at heterosexual assumptions.
"Christmas is about more than religion, it's also about love and families, not to mention shopping," he said. "Two men or two women can form a family too these days, even one with a child." "

Clearly, as our culture slides farther and farther away from its value system based on absolute truth toward secular humanism, there will be more assaults on the beliefs of those who still celebrate Christ's birth on December 25th. Barring a third great awakening, we should expect it. But don't despair, all the assaults cannot change the fact that Jesus DID come and we can celebrate that all year long. There is nothing sacred about December 25th, if the pagans want it back, fine; our message doesn't change.