-I was interested by Jay Leno's comments the other night when he -referred to all the talk about the word "Christmas"...he observed that -when Halloween (which is, afterall also a religious holiday) comes -around no one seems to mind "Halloween" used everywhere and it is a -holiday about satan and vampires. And yet all these folks are getting -so worked up over "Christmas" when it is a holiday about Jesus and -Santa Claus... - -Interesting thought...

One response:

Only if you haven't been reading anything serious on this subject.

And the fact that "you" would think Christmas is about Santa Claus is rather telling as well...

"As I understand it, the original Puritan colonists in America, back in the 1600s, entirely eschewed Christmas, considering it "popish superstition". (After all, it does mean "Christ Mass", and no Puritan wanted anything to do with Mass.) They went to work on December 25 just as on any other day, unless it was the Sabbath.

Yet the modern neo-Puritans, the conservative/fundamentalist/evangelical Christians, are all in a lather trying to keep Christmas in the public square. They're entirely inconsistent with their spiritual and cultural forebears. What are they thinking?

All Christians ought to read Harvey Cox's classic book _The Secular City_, in which he explains why the secularization we are seeing (and were seeing 40 years ago, when he wrote it) is actually the realization of the kingdom of God. I believe also a favorite theologian of conservatives, Karl Barth, considered Christianity as the "abolition of religion". Yet conservatives are trying to preserve religion (or at least religiosity; there's a difference). These people do not appear to think seriously about what they're doing.

-- Jeffrey J. Sargent