Thursday, December 17, 2015

A Thought on Keeping Christ in Christmas

I would like to say what I have to say without sounding preachy or hypocritical, but unfortunately I don't know how to do that, and since I'm going to hell anyway for cracking my knuckles and making biblical puns, I may as well get a full ride. 

I have seen approximately 749 posts, bumper stickers, and tattoos about 'Keeping Christ in Christmas' [share if you agree, ignore if you're a fiend in human form sent from hell to wreck havoc on God's good Earth] and I'd just like to make the suggestion that Christ is in Christmas whether or not we 'keep' Him in it. Christ's existence doesn't depend on my belief in Him. I believe in Him now and He exists, but if I stop believing in Him tomorrow, He won't cease to exist. If every family on Earth somehow forgot through an amnesia epidemic about the existence of God and celebrated Christmas as a secular holiday centered around gift-giving and family values, Christ would not be taken out of Christmas, because of the ontological [if that's the word I want] definition of Christmas. 

I'm not a huge fan of the attitude that all belief systems work in conjunction with each other. I don't believe that Christianity is true for me and Atheism is true for an atheist. I believe that Christianity is true for me and for the atheist because I believe that Christianity is the Truth. To quote my good friend Emerson Cod, "There is one truth and it has come a-knockin." And while Christ is more obviously present in the Christian's Christmas, I think He can present Himself in different ways to an atheist through the atheist's secular Christmas. In other words, unless I'm wrong, Christ can be in a thing even if He is never mentioned in adjacency with said thing [for better-articulated arguments, look up Peter Kreeft's thoughts on Christianity in The Lord of the Rings.]


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