Christmas

Oh brother. The latest skirmish in the so-called War on Christmas is coming from the White House of all places. The Bush family Christmas card wishes readers "Season's Greetings" rather than "Merry Christmas." (By the way, they've done this for the whole of his presidency, to no complaint.) Some Christians are quite put out by this. Um, did anyone actually read the card? I saw a picture of it on the news. It begins with a Scripture citation. I didn't get the reference, but the first line is "The Lord is my strength." Some possible references: Exodus 15:2 ("The LORD is my strength and song, And He has become my salvation; This is my God, and I will praise Him; My father's God, and I will extol Him."), Psalm 28:7 ("The LORD is my strength and my shield; My heart trusts in Him, and I am helped; Therefore my heart exults, And with my song I shall thank Him."), and Psalm 118:4 ("The LORD is my strength and song, And He has become my salvation.") For such quotations, the president gets comments like

Bush "claims to be a born-again, evangelical Christian. But he sure doesn't act like one," said Joseph Farah, editor of the conservative Web site WorldNetDaily.com. "I threw out my White House card as soon as I got it."

Declaring the Lord is his strength and salvation, that he trust in God, that he will praise his God? My goodness, how un-Christian is that! I can see why Mr. Farah would throw that out. Imagine if other Christians started doing the same as the president.

On a less sarcastic note, I do find the War on Christmas thing kind of funny. First of all, in practice it really is not a religious holiday. The fact that even Christians have to be reminded that the "reason for the season" is Jesus' birth should tell you that. But even historically, there's not too much Christian-ness about it. The holiday began as a pagan celebration of the winter solstice, to honor both the god Sol Invictus and the Persian god Mithra (god of light, hence the association of Christmas and lights?). When Christianity came along, these people wanted to keep their celebration so they gave it a face lift and decided it was about Jesus. The Christmas tree is descended from the pagan idea that the evergreen tree represents the renewal of life. Most of the customs and symbols of Christmas are derived from the Germanic pagan holiday Yule at the time of the winter solstice. Part of the pagan Yule was human and animal sacrifices, which were then hung from the branches of the tree (hence tree ornaments?).

UPDATE: Apparently the citation in the president's card is from Psalm 28.