Merry Christmas, Happy Channukah

or whatever you choose to celebrate.  You can change the words, but you can't change my warmest wishes for everything good for you and those you cherish. 

Churches, like all groups, have personalities, and in the one I attend, it would be remarkable to toss a wadded up paper ball and not hit an engineer, nurse, doctor, or a techie professional.  Or an insurance agent, lawyer, paralegal, IT pro, or small business owner...  It's not news to this bunch that Jesus was probably born in the spring (or fall, depending on whom you read), that the December 25th date comes from adapting to the Roman Saturnalia or other pagan holidays; nor would they be shocked if you told them Christmas has more secular than holy traditions associated with it.  Not that we don't joyously celebrate the reason for the season, but Easter is a bigger holiday than Christmas for the simple reason that everyone has a birthday, but only one man in history has ever come back.  

That said, while the idea that there's a war on Christmas is sometimes ridiculed, there really is an intentional attack on Christmas in the public square.  It's part of the larger attempt to destroy western culture.  The bright guys at Washington Rebel (Morgan Freeburg, in this case) have some good observations on this.  They start out with the story that elected Congress Critters have been forbidden to use the term Merry Christmas in their mailings to constituents:

This is a constant in the War on Christmas. It’s a bunch of “can’t can’t can’t” with no purpose to it at all.

Two. And this is a bit more subtle: The congressmen, who are elected to their positions and are therefore accountable to the will of the electorate, are told what they can & cannot do by people who are not similarly elected, and therefore are not similarly accountable. There isn’t much point to noticing that, except for one thing…

…this, too, is a constant in the War on Christmas. Useless rules, which because of their uselessness are completely arbitrary, since they function as ethereal guardrails marking the edge of a highway that doesn’t have any such edge. And although they are arbitrary, they are enforced, ...

A perfect example is the "three reindeer rule".  The war on Christmas can be tracked to the 1950's "Communist Agenda".  This was entered into the Congressional Record in 1963, from a book written by an FBI agent in 1958.

27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a "religious crutch." (see Jim Wallis and the Social Justice in churches movement)
28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of "separation of church and state.

I would have been as skeptical as anyone, five years ago, if someone told me communists still existed and were still trying to destroy the west.  Now that I've seen it, I don't doubt it.  Maybe the groups that want to destroy us don't all want communism, maybe they just want to be god-emperors themselves.  But it is clear they are doing all they can to implement these two items from 50+ years ago. 

When asked to define the American religion, Benjamin Franklin said, "I believe in one God, the creator of the universe. That he governs by his providence. That he ought to be worshipped. That the most acceptable service we render to him is doing good to his other children. That the soul of man is immortal, and will be treated with justice in another life respecting its conduct in this."  There is no denomination mentioned there. 

"And the Grinch, with his Grinch-feet ice cold in the snow, stood puzzling and puzzling, how could it be so? It came without ribbons. It came without tags. It came without packages, boxes or bags. And he puzzled and puzzled 'till his puzzler was sore. Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn't before. What if Christmas, he thought, doesn't come from a store. What if Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more."
-- Dr. Seuss