Every year I give my father a bottle of Riesling for Christmas partly because it is the only thing I know he likes, but mostly so I can write on his card, “Tis the Rieslin’ for the Season,” a joke that never gets new. But the gift is also a reminder that, as I present it to him, we will be entering the uneasy truce that is the 11 months between Christmas Day and the next Black Friday when the War on Christmas officially begins anew.
This year the hostilities resumed a little early with the release of Kirk Cameron’s Saving Christmas: Put Christ Back in Christmas [note: article originally written in 2011, updated 2014, publishing now for the first time on my website]. On the movie poster Cameron, wielding an oversized candy cane and a luminous snow globe containing the holy family, bursts through a Christmas tree as presents, a Santa hat, and hundred-dollar bills scatter and the cross emerges from under the tree. The movie is superfluous. They should have just produced the poster, which distills the rancor over “the holidays” to peppermint vodka-like clarity. The visuals are obvious and in just the seven words of the title “Christ” appears three times. There’s a shot across the (Xmas) bough for you. With this poster in mind I make my annual trek to what I like to call the Army-Navy Store of the War on Christmas: Hallmark. These stores do not revel in subtlety. The air is sharp with pine and cinnamon scents, and the displays are vibrant in the greens, golds, silvers, and reds of the season. The cards and wrapping paper suggest “Christmas” is safe here. Yet in the center of the store in the ornaments section something is amiss. The USS Vengeance is new for this holiday season, alongside the Alien alien, Chevy Chase on Vacation, and the leg lamp. A professional football player goes up for a catch right next to the fictional mass murderer Darth Vader, 
the pagan god Thor, and a witch from the magical Land of Oz. Over the last few years I have seen Captain Jack Sparrow, a ghost-pirate bearing a passing resemblance to one of the three wise men (no way he gives up the gold), Harry Potter battling Voldemort, Indiana Jones, and a bar sign (Cheers!). The greatest coup committed by the enemies of Christmas was in 2011, sneaking a vampire, a werewolf, and the deflowered teenage girl who loves them onto the tree, the unholy trinity of Edward, Jacob, and Bella, the perfect complement to any nativity. Clearly Hallmark is the Trojan horse of the armies of the Solstice.
Yes, if America’s Christmas headquarters is any indicator, Christ is in fact losing the War on Christmas. Beside Hallmark’s pop-culture and Hollywood imagery they also sell “Christmas Traditions” ornaments depicting the secular icons of the season: snowmen and Santas in various poses, and the Grinch of more recent vintage. And what for the Savior? There is a small section under “Christmas Traditions” called “Faith.” I imagine Cameron would think that’s like having one small corner of the gym reserved for “fitness.” Is it time for the faithful to panic? Perhaps not.
There are dozens of denominations following the teachings of Jesus Christ and at least as many ways to worship Him from the baroque pageantry of the Catholics to the vocal passion of the African Methodist Episcopal Church to the showmanship of non-denominational mega-churches. So too are there many ways to celebrate the Season. I know Christians that do not allow their children to trick-or-treat at Halloween; I’m guessing the Twilight trio will not be hanging from the evergreens in those homes either. But Hallmark seems to have a working business model so someone is buying all those ornaments, and I bet a lot of their customers park it in a pew on Sunday mornings.
While we call this the “holiday season,” the holiday in question—the day most of us get off from work—is December 25th. For the four weeks before, radio stations play 24-hour Christmas music and between the infantile “I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas” and the sophomoric “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer” we can hear Faith Hill or Mariah Carey sing “The Little Drummer Boy,” Martina McBride’s sublime take on “O Holy Night,” and the many, effortlessly touching renderings of “Silent Night.” All of these parts of the holidays coexist and rather than undermining the Season I think they may reinforce it.
To Kirk Cameron and all my Christian neighbors out there I would say, relax and enjoy. December is tacky, noisy, consumerist, and often cynical, but also a month-long encomium to the tender birth of your greatest hero. Remember, this is your origin story and it is a blockbuster. The season of peace is not a war and when people say “Happy Holidays” you know the one they mean.
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