I try to avoid stores as much as possible at Christmastime –
I try to do most of my shopping online – and I don’t keep up with all the lists
of stores that are refusing to say “Merry Christmas.” So I don’t know if I’m supposed to be
boycotting the store down the street or not, and I really don’t care.
I’m not terribly impressed with people who think they have
done some great work for the kingdom when they complain to a 19-year-old
cashier who just said “Happy Holidays” that she is doing the work of the devil
or some such nonsense. Honestly, having
worked retail for several Christmases, the season is difficult already (unless
you’re on commission, you’re pretty much working twice as hard as any other
day, but for the same amount of money), and if you’re try to add pressure to
these people’s lives because they greeted you in a slightly different way than
you wanted, then you really should be looking more into the doctrines of love
and charity.
I’m also not writing letters to corporations who have
decided to offend people by saying “Happy Holidays” rather than offend different
people by saying “Merry Christmas.”
But I do have a couple of axes to grind on the topic. And I will do so now.
First of all, I understand why militant atheists get all
offended by the mention of Christ.
Frankly, they know the truth of God, they know there is a coming
judgment, but they love their rebellion and sin, and they don’t want to be
reminded of the truth. Yes, that
paragraph will get people offended, but it’s true (Romans 1), and it’s proven
true by the fact that people are getting offended because of how worked up they
get over someone they claim to believe to be fiction. But this is not my real point here, so I’ll
save that argument for another time.
But why are Christians getting offended? Look, I understand that the rich Christian
heritage in our country is being eroded away, and this is just a symptom of it,
but at the same time, these are organizations that are most certainly not
Christian, and they are selling to a very diverse people, more diverse than
we’ve ever been. Even a few years ago,
we could assume that the person walking into the store celebrated Christmas,
but not so anymore. So why do you expect
the non-Christian organization to order the non-Christian 19-year-old behind
the counter to wish non-Christians “Merry Christmas”? Frankly, we’re behaving like a bunch of angry
atheists standing in front of a nativity scene.
Furthermore, is this the same store you shop at on
Sunday? Yes, I know that you think that
the Sabbath has been done away with, and you’re wrong on that point, but one
way or another, I think it is important to remind you that the rich Christian
heritage of this country includes Sabbath-keeping, but in many cases, not
necessarily Christmas-keeping. You can
read William Bradford’s journal of the Plymouth Colony, and note how he scolds
a group of people because they didn’t want to work on Christmas day. These are the pilgrims, and they worked the
field on Christmas.
How does that grab you?
Now, I love Christmas, and I love that most people have the day off on
Christmas. If I owned a business, I
would let my employees off on Christmas day, and Christmas Eve, and we would
have tons of decorations. So I’m not
arguing from a purely Puritan view of Christmas here.
But they are right when they point out that Christmas is not
a biblical holiday – but the Sabbath is.
As the church, we need to acknowledge when we have chipped away at the
Christian heritage of the country in the name of football and convenience, then
complained when the secularists joined in.
We need to repent of this, and I mean “we,” because I had to go to the
store this last Sunday too. I didn’t
prepare as I should have on Saturday, and my child ran out of milk. I was glad the store was open, but I was also
contributing to the problem. To be
frank, I sinned in not preparing properly on Saturday. That store is making people work because
people like me demanded to shop on Sunday.
Those employees are unable to attend church, whether they are Christians
or maybe had been invited by a friend.
They were unable to hear the Gospel, to participate in communion, to
raise their voices with the saints in worship.
(And most of you are probably looking at the screen with a
bewildered expression, because you haven’t heard a Christian advocate for
Sabbath lately. And that’s the
problem. We’ve lost so much of good
doctrine and practice because of pop Christianity. I know how you feel – I hadn’t heard anything
like this until I was in my 30s either.)
And then Christians come in after church and scold them for
saying “Happy Holidays.” Good job, guys!
Lastly, I certainly expect that most people reading my blog,
being expressly Reformed, are attending good churches. But I also notice that a lot of people
posting on Facebook that they chewed out a 19-year-old at the store also talk
about the church they go to, and they’re false churches like Lakewood. Before you scold someone for not
understanding Christmas, please make sure that you do. What does your pastor preach every week? Himself, or Christ and Him crucified? 6 steps to great sex, or a great marriage, or
financial prosperity, or Christ and Him crucified? Does he cast vision, or urge you to make a
seed offering, or claim to have visions from God, or tries to be positive, or
does he preach Christ and Him crucified?
If your church doesn’t understand the Gospel, why in the
world would the 19-year-old at the counter?
Church, we need to fix ourselves before getting upset that
secular corporations aren’t getting it right.
And instead of chewing someone out for saying “Happy Holidays,” how
about we thank them for their service to their neighbor in the most stressful
time in their year.
Invite them to church, and hopefully they can get a Sunday
off to attend.
