“Dear Cody: I am a new believer. Some of my friends tell me that that there is a ‘War on Christmas.’ Papa says, ‘If you read it in PROVOKETIVE it’s so.’ Please tell me the truth: is there a war on Christmas?”

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Virginia Namaak

115 East 59<sup>th</sup> street

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VIRGINIA, your friends are right. They are not right about the form of the war or about who is waging it, or even when it happens. Your friends believe in a kingdom that has been firmly rooted in the workings of this world. Their minds have fallen captive to the imagination of power perceived through the lens of domination, heard in the phrase ‘might makes right,’ or the inverse ‘right makes might.’ Unfortunately, our minds cannot grasp real power, Virginia, and our imaginations are too small to contain the whole of truth and knowledge. Which is why Christmas came in the first place- in the words of a great Christmas song, Virginia, Jesus “came to shed a little light on this darkening scene.”

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Yes, VIRGINIA, there is a war on Christmas. It happens not just during the winter months, but it happens as certainly as love and generosity are set aside and bitterness is picked up instead; whenever absolute certainty is honored above humility, acceptance, and grace. It happens when a friendly holiday greeting is taken, not on face value as a warm gesture, but instead as a provocation. It happens when we who profess to follow in the footsteps of Jesus the Messiah, ignore his own example, the one who:

‘though he was in the form of God,

did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited,

but emptied himself,

taking the form of a slave,

being born in human likeness

And being found in human form,

he humbled himself

and became obedient to the point of

death—

even death on a cross.

Christmas, VIRGINIA—the birth of Jesus, the incarnation in human flesh—was not about fighting for any rights. No, VIRIGINIA, Christmas was, IS, about the laying aside of power, the giving up of rights. It’s about vacating a position of power to sleep in a box of hay. The only war on Christmas, VIRGINIA, is the battle against humility. When one looks at the cradle and sees a call to arms, the war against Christmas heats up. When selfless servanthood takes a backseat to power grabs, the clash of armor can be heard.

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But thank God! Christmas lives and it will live forever. Wherever love and humility, generosity and grace abound, there you will find Christmas. Whenever room is made for another, whatever that looks like and no matter who does it—Muslim, Christian, gay, straight, Jew, Gentile, man, woman, old, young— Christmas is renewed. Jesus takes on flesh again. The light breaks through the darkness once more. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, Christmas will be born anew, no matter what ways we might we might make war on