I'm a Christian ... and I really don't care if folks say "Happy Holidays" - because there's more than one holiday, or holy day, for lots of different folks.
And more power to 'em all.
"Our enemy," a very wise man once said to me, "is never a person of another faith, but the acids of a raging secularism that saps the human spirit of meaning and anything remotely resembling real hope."
I'm tired, really tired, of the Christian Wrong setting the terms of the so-called "culture wars" - nonsense. These folks relish a fight and are likely to see a demon behind every newscast and under ever pulpit not signed up and rightly aligned with their silly little world.
And, by he way, the "X" in Xmas is a Christian invention, being the first Greek letter of the name of Christ ... Christians invented the symbol long before the world picked up on it.
So, rather than the silly "Put Christ back into Xmas," I say, "Keep X in Christmas," or more appropriately, in our hearts and in our actions.
For 300 years, the Christian family did just fine under persecution and whatnot, without the support of either state or culture, and only when those two got on board to save their own necks, did the church become a power-monger and invent such delicacies as the inquisition to coerce a confession out of so-called heretics so that when they were killed by the church and state, their soul, at least, would flit off to heaven, or more likely, purgatory.
There is no culture war, there is no danger of the church losing any battles, and surely the church is not under attack - these are the imaginings of little minds who can only think in military terms about their faith, who love to scare folks, because scared folks are easily manipulated into giving big bucks to the cause and doing and saying as they're told.
So, Happy Holidays, whatever your holiday might be.
We're all in this together, and together, we welcome God, as we know God, as we understand God, into our world.
Yes, I'm a Christian, full-blown and delighted, but I'll stand beside folks of other persuasions, and beside folks of no persuasion at all, because only as we walk arm-in-arm can we make this a better world.
