War on Christmas: 1st Sunday of Advent Reflection

Over the next few weeks of Advent I'm going to be writing a series of posts on the "War on Christmas." To start us off, we'll lay the blame where it ultimately belongs, historically - Protestants.

It was the Puritans those 'second' Anglo Americans who disliked anything gaudy and non-dour and considered both to be evidences of Popery and the wickedness of Catholicism. The believed you didn't celebrate Christmas and in fact, Christmas was outlawed in the Plymouth Colony. Instead, you worked, because Christmas was not a feast to be observed, but another day of the year for you to work out your salvation in fear and trembling.

These were the same folks who believed in Calvin's double predestination and a sign of your predestination was the wealth that you accumulated as a grace and benefit from God for the elect - a theology that survives today and has influenced much of the rampant commercialism and hyper capitalism, and consumerism that are hallmarks of American Exceptionalism, as well as the various Churches of the Prosperity Gospel who have reaped many successes from shaping their polity much like a corporation.

It's ironic that the AEP are the one's leading this charge to "Save Christmas" when they rarely if never acknowledge it was their forefathers in faith who fired the first shots heard around the world against Christmas, that it's their efforts that have inspired marketing executives and corporate chiefs - bastard 3rd cousins twice removed to put out Christmas Trees and decorations, first right after Thanksgiving, and now practically before Halloween - and radio stations to begin playing music in the early days of November instead of after Black Friday.

Sphere: Related Content