Secular Christmas? Bah, humbug!

Remember the War on Christmas? That Bush-era custom of gathering around the flickering Fox News yule log to join Bill O'Reilly in defending America's Judeo-Christian heritage from the savage hordes ululating "happy holidays"?

The former "O'Reilly Factor" host declared victory in 2016 but warned that insurgents remained. Sure enough, a new skirmish has broken out in Atlanta, with Emory Healthcare's recent announcement that the company intends to remove Christmas Eve as a paid holiday while adding Juneteenth.

Shots fired? Unlike Kwanzaa, a wholly fabricated "tradition," Juneteenth isn't fake. It just seems that way, thanks to its appropriation by Black Lives Matter grifters and the corporations who suck up to them. Before George Floyd's unfortunate end, it was a perfectly respectable, largely regional commemoration of the day news of the Emancipation Proclamation finally reached slaves in Texas.

As unfestive as it may be to work on Christmas Eve, people have been doing it for years. Christmas Day, too. Someone's got to man police stations and emergency rooms. Still, I don't blame anyone paranoid enough to read into this gesture or interpret it as a harbinger of things to come.

That said, just how important should official recognition be to those who celebrate the true reason for the season? Would finally getting the Google Doodle to say "Merry Christmas" make the prevailing Christ-free celebrations any less irritating?

When Scrooge declares Christmas a "humbug" in "A Christmas Carol," he means something rather specific: Christmas is fake, a crass money-grab obscured by lofty talk about "the spirit of giving." Scrooge famously succumbs to holiday cheer by the end, but his conversion is to a vague, sentimental humanism that still reigns today. So his point still stands. Without the baby Jesus, December 25 is just another excuse to buy stuff.

Would it be the worst thing for Christians to return to a more private and insular celebration of their Savior's birth? We're called to share the good news, but one gets the sense that authentic mainstream observance of Advent in America peaked with "A Charlie Brown Christmas." And not everyone welcomes the year-end suspension of routine; for some, the holidays can exacerbate feelings of loneliness and futility. Perhaps the best gift we can offer these lost souls is our imperfect example of quiet, solemn gratitude, testimony to the true and lasting joy waiting beneath the frenzy.